


Pall Malls + Poetry // Judd Birch x OC

by CalicoJack11



Category: Big Mouth (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Car Sex, Casual Sex, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Daddy Kink, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fanfiction, NSFW Art, Porn With Plot, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Smoking, Smut, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 53,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28107975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalicoJack11/pseuds/CalicoJack11
Summary: Emily is new in town and close to the exact opposite of the boy she meets in a bathroom at a house party. She's determined to keep herself locked up, locked out, and closed off from anyone and everyone. Small gratuities go a long way though, and Judd Birch can't help but to think of her every time he tastes bubblegum or watches fog settle over an otherwise sunny morning.Very NSFW.I think I'm gonna include a lot of actual poetry in this story because I've been hella into it lately. If you're a reader and poet and would like some of your work featured in a chapter (with credit) please DM me!
Relationships: Judd Birch (Big Mouth)/Original Female Character(s), Judd Birch (Big Mouth)/Reader
Comments: 42
Kudos: 127





	1. Cigarettes and Secrets

The flick of a lighter followed by a deep inhale. Hold it, lean your head back, close your eyes. Feel the nicotine seep into your gums. That shit will kill you one day; cause your teeth to rot and your jaw to fall off. For now, it's a means of sustainability.

Exhale.

That was always the hardest part for Emily — exhaling. It didn't matter what it was. Smoke, hate, love, whatever. She never wanted to breathe it out into the atmosphere, it was easier just to hold it in, to stuff it so far down into her guts that no one knew it even existed.

Letting it out had gotten her in trouble a time or two. It was why she'd missed out on her entire summer.

Emily moved to Bridgeton over three months ago, and she was only just spending her first night there. Her mother had insisted she go out for the evening, try to make friends, see who she would be starting school with the following week. She didn't want to make a life here, but locking herself in the bathroom of a stranger's house during a party was slightly more comfortable than locking herself in a bedroom that might as well be a foreign country.

Inhale again. The smoke doesn't burn as badly the second time around.

That was where she sat now — in the windowsill of a bathroom that was just as strange to her as her own home. This house was porcelain and clean, she didn't know who owned it, but she envied them. Envied, but didn't respect. That's why she didn't mind pulling her muddy sneakers up onto the ledge with her, they left footprints along the tub and wall.

She scrolled aimlessly through her phone as she blew smoke out of the window into the darkness of a late summer night. Pall Malls Red 100s, they were cheap and tasted like shit. They took the edge off, made her fingers feel less jittery, her mind less scattered, her legs less restless.

They told her that the medicine would fix those things for her. "Maybe you'll even want to quit smoking!" they'd said.

They were wrong.

Emily's ears perked up at the sound of someone fidgeting with the bathroom door. She'd locked it three times for good measure, but whoever needed to take a piss wasn't getting the hint.

"Occupied." She called out and inhaled again, turning her attention back to her phone.

The lock clicked, the door popped open. Emily didn't stir, she only turned her head slowly. If there was one thing the medicine _did_ do, it was grant her the tolerance of a saint. A tall, slim figure walked in and kicked the door shut behind him, causing her cigarette smoke to backdraft into the house.

"You've been in here for twenty fucking minutes." He spat, except his tone wasn't very malicious at all, instead very matter-of-fact. Empathetic, almost.

"That was locked." She said, lowering her knees away from her chest.

"I picked it, shit-for-brains." The unknown figure turned slightly to the side of the toilet bowl, facing away from Emily. She heard his zipper unfurl and a moment later, the ringing sound of piss against pearly white ceramic.

Emily grunted in disgust, "Ugh. Fuckin' gross, dude." And he sighed, maybe with a little exaggeration just for kicks. When his bladder was finally empty, he zipped back up and flushed, barely washing his hands after that for long enough to matter.

"Why are you hiding out in my bathroom?" He asked, "If it's to do drugs, you can do them downstairs like the rest of us. There's no fuckin' narcs here."

The thought of drugs didn't seem too bad right about now, she laughed and finally locked her phone, setting it down on the windowsill beside her. "No drugs. All I have are cigarettes, but I'd be happy to participate in a not-so-even trade."

He looked her up and down, she didn't _look_ like she was the type to do drugs. Not the kind he was doing, anyway. Girls like her liked designer drugs, he'd learned, expensive shit that suppresses their appetite for food and increases it for stupid decisions. She didn't seem like a stoner, with her pastel hair colored the same shade as a role of Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape. He saw the muddy footprints in the tub then, and the pale pink Converse that'd tracked them there, along with the light wash blue jeans and tye-dyed yellow crop-top.

He almost gagged from the presence of so much color.

"Did Leah invite you?" He asked, and she shrugged.

"I don't know a Leah."

"So, what? You just tagged along with one of the other annoying broads out there?"

Emily smiled. She tossed her burnt out filter into the toilet and it sizzled on impact with the water. "I was literally just walking down the road and heard music. You don't exactly have a bouncer stationed at the front door."

He cut his eyes at her, scowling harder than before (which she'd deemed impossible until now). He didn't appreciate this girl locking herself in his bathroom and causing him to nearly piss himself, but a good party crashing he could get behind.

"Judd." He said after she failed to falter beneath his intense gaze.

"Emily." She tossed him her pack of cigarettes and lighter.

Judd left the room for just a moment before returning with a small tin box. Emily recognized what it was instantly, she had one of her own tucked into one of the many boxes that was yet to be unpacked back home. He locked the door behind him and got to work rolling a blunt on the surface of the sink, cigarette dangling from his lips the whole time and smoke blowing out through his nostrils.

"You're not some escaped inmate from a psych ward, right?" He asked, looking up at her as if he were serious. "I mean, the paddywagon isn't gonna be loading you up in a straight jacket by the end of the night?"

"I was released on my own accord, thank you very much."

Judd finished off the blunt with a swipe of his tongue. He kicked off his high tops and took a seat on the edge of the tub, facing Emily. He lit it and the smell flooded her sinuses. Emily had been sober since the end of April and fucking loathed every moment of it. Finding a new dealer in a small town where you know approximately nobody was proving to be more difficult than it seemed.

He passed it up to her and she did the same — two puffs, then pass — over and over and over again until her eyelids sunk lazily over her deep blue eyes.

"This is exactly what they warned us about in _D.A.R.E_ , I think." She said, "Strangers offering you free drugs. Who knew the public school system would actually get something right?"

Judd smiled, he'd moved into the tub when his high began to set in. It was somehow more comfortable there. "What do you know about public school? Bridgeton High is the only one in our district and I've never seen you there."

"I just moved here. I start at Bridgeton next week." Emily's mouth was so dry that her voice came out raspy. Her saliva had become sticky against the roof of her mouth. "Fucking Christ, I'm so thirsty."

Judd remembered then that he'd been sipping diligently on a bottle of Jack when his bladder demanded to be emptied. He'd left it downstairs beneath the cupboard so that his stupid sister and her idiot friends wouldn't get into it. He got up, slowly, and unlocked the bathroom door.

"Heineken, PBR or Natty?" He asked.

She settled for a Pabst.

It only took Judd three whole minutes to push his way through the crowd downstairs, grab his handle and two beers, and make it back upstairs. Time moves differently when you're stoned, though, and Emily was sucking down another cigarette by the time he returned.

"So again, why are you locked inside my bathroom? You can smoke outside on the patio." He asked, tossing her one of the two cans.

Emily popped the tab and licked the spilled residue off the side, her little pink tongue peeked through her lips and then disappeared faster than Judd could manage to appreciate it. She chugged half of the beer in her first sip, the coolness of it felt nice going down.

"My mom wants me to make friends here. Me not wanting to go out turned into something like a fight at the dinner table—"

Something like a fight. That's the only way Emily could describe them because they almost always consisted of her mother making back handed comments, her reacting appropriately, and then her mother rolling over onto her belly like a wounded animal. Then her stepdad would try to play father figure, which would turn into a screaming match or doors slammed or dishes broken.

"—I hate parties. I just wanted to see what kind of people I'll be going to school with. But I'm not ready to go back home so I thought I'd sneak a few stoges in here."

Judd had grabbed his own pack of Camel 99s from downstairs and lit one up. He hopped onto the counter of the sink, bending his knee up to meet his chest. "Well you're not missing anything, all of those retards fucking suck. The only reason this shit's even going on is because of my dumbass sister."

He exhaled and the room filled with a soft haze, further clouding Emily's inebriated mind. She couldn't quite wrap her head around why this stranger was still here, in a fucking bathroom with her. It was his house, surely he had a bedroom he could retreat to if he was really loathing the scene downstairs so much. Judd chalked it up to hormones. _"Why would I lock myself up and smoke alone when I can do the same thing here, but with a view?"_ , he told himself.

Emily downed the last of her beer. Her phone buzzed against the windowsill and she was slow to pick it up. The only person that messaged her these days was her mother.

She sighed, "Guess she's done sucking off my stepdad, she wants me back home."

Judd scoffed. A short, loud, sorry excuse for a laugh as Emily made absolutely no move to start her journey back home. This place seemed like its own little world to her, a private oasis where she didn't have to deal with whatever shit was going on at home.

"You always do what mommy and daddy say?" He asked, his voice having dropped an octave.

Emily snapped her gaze over to him and her already shallow breathing caught in her chest when she saw Judd with his head leaned back against the mirror. He was smiling, genuinely smiling, canines on display and all. She looked away with hopes that it would untie the knot in her throat.

"I think the fact that I just spent my entire summer in a fucking padded cell answers that question."

She regretted the comment instantly. Not because of how Judd might react, no -- because of how her mood always seemed to drop when she made jokes to cope with pain.

"Yeah?" Judd said, not missing a beat, "I heard the patients and nurses at those places fuck in supply closets. That true?"

It was absolutely true. Emily remembered her roommate at that hell hole, a grade-A schizo and narcissist, sneaking out almost every night for the three months she was there, only to return an hour later well fucked and more sedated than then benzos could ever make her.

Emily didn't get propositioned like that, though. The techs liked their dirty secrets _really_ crazy. They knew that Emily wasn't insane, she was just unheard.

She nodded her head and Judd asked, "That how you got out? By blowing a couple of old dudes in exchange for signed release papers?"

Her chest ran warm and Judd smiled when he saw her cheeks flush the same shade as her hair. He liked to watch pretty bitches squirm, especially when they seemed so virginal.

"I mean, it took me three months to get out, so..."

"So you either don't put out or you're _really_ bad at it. Got it."

Emily choked on smoke from laughter. Her eyes watered and her throat became scratchy. To her surprise, Judd joined her in laughter. His deep, gravely chuckles making her become more inebriated with giggles.

"Fuck, your parents must _really_ suck." He said, wiping his eyes. "I could never manage to piss mine off enough for them to institutionalize me."

The doorknob rattled when someone tried to hastily push it open. Emily hadn't realized that Judd had relocked it behind him. "Use the one in the pool house, fucktard!" He shouted immediately.

Emily looked at her phone again, it was half past midnight. She would be awake until the early morning hours as the medication gave her terrible insomnia, but if she left now she could ignore her mother's wishes to "talk" on her way to her bedroom. If she left later, the nagging voice in the back of her head that egged her to keep sharing cigarettes and secrets with this boy would be quelled, but she'd have to deal with Bruce because her mother would already be asleep.

The latter didn't appeal to her very much.

"I should get going. You're gonna have people pissing on the floor if we stay locked up in here." She said, sliding off of the high up windowsill and landing with her feet in the tub. Her shirt rode up then and Judd took in the sight of her ribs becoming visible for just a moment, her bare torso and belly button showing as she stretched her arms above her head.

"My room's next door." He said, voice deep and quiet in case anyone was listening from the hallway. "If you need somewhere to hide out for a few hours, I mean."

Emily pulled her bag over her head and began searching through it for her house key.

"Let me give you a ride. There's tons of pervs in Bridgeton that are a lot creepier than I am, they'd love to snatch you up in the middle of the night."

A grin sat on her face, she found her key. "You're drunk _and_ high, I'll take my chances with the perverts."

"Have it your way." Judd hopped off of the counter and unlocked the bathroom door, swinging it open for her. He grabbed his pack of Camel 99s and held it out, "Take another for the road. Those Pall Malls are shit."

She grabbed one from the pack and stuck it behind her ear. Judd thought it looked nice tucked into her sickeningly pink hair. Emily thanked him and left the same way she came, right through the front door.

* * *

Emily slipped the cigarette into her bra as she strolled closer and closer to home. Or at least she thought she was getting close to home, she hadn't exactly lived here long enough to be out roaming the streets late in the evening.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open as quietly as possible. It didn't creak, this house was too new for it to be settling yet.

Still, her stepdad rounded the corner of the hallway. He stood in front of her in his boxers with his arms crossed over his chest. Emily hated Rodney. He was the reason she'd been locked up in that nut house in the first place and she'd loathed him long before then.

"Where ya been, kid?" He asked.

Emily's fingers tugged at the bottom hem of her shirt, pleading for it to stretch over what little skin remained visible.

"Out 'making friends'. That's what you and mom wanted, right?" She replied.

Rodney smiled and it made her feel slimy all over. It made her skin crawl as if roaches were flooding out of her pores and digging their way back beneath her skin.

"This move will be good for you, Em." She hated when he called her that. "It'll be good for all of us."

Emily turned down the short hallway that led to her room, she couldn't stand to look at his near nude body for another second.

"Remember, no smoking inside!" He called after her.

She slammed and locked her bedroom door behind her, pushing stacks of boxes in front of it for good measure. Her hands rifled through the box labeled _BOOKS_ in jumbo sharpie, searching for the one she'd been reading before having been forced away with only the clothes on her back. She flung her window open and kicked out the screen, planting herself on the edge of it just as she had the window above the bathtub.

Emily lit the cigarette that Judd gave her and folded open the pages, sucking down the nicotine quickly as she digested the words nice and slow.

_Who, if I screamed out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?  
_ _And if one suddenly did take me to his heart: I would perish from his stronger existence.  
_ _For beauty is nothing but the onset of terror we're still just able to bear,_  
 _and we admire it so because it calmly disdains to destroy us.  
_ _Every angel is terrifying._


	2. Daddy's Little Girl

Emily stood in front of Bridgeton High that next week. To say she was apprehensive was putting it lightly, she'd taken a triple dose of her medication that morning just to deal with the anxiety. It didn't help that she close to never slept, she knew that the bags under her eyes were dark, accentuated by the bright blue of her irises. Concealer did very little to hide her exhaustion.

She'd pulled her shoulder length hair halfway up into an adorable topknot that morning, having tucked her oversized persian green crewneck into her blue jeans.

She didn't want people to look at her body. She got enough of that at home.

Her first class of the day was US government, effectively the most boring history class she had taken in years. Emily wasn't one for mathematics and history, she liked english and science more. But her true love was in the arts, and if there was one thing she actually could thank her stint in the looney-bin for, it was that her therapist had pushed for Bridgeton to bump a student out of art class so that she could take their spot.

Written at the top of her printed schedule was a note in lovely cursive, likely the handwriting of a female. _"Please report to the counselor's office upon arrival.",_ it read. So she did. She signed in on the clipboard, her name being the first on the list, and waited with her fingers pressed between her knees.

"Emily?" A woman said as teachers and other adults made their way up and down the secluded office hallway.

Emily smiled and followed her into the room, taking a seat across from the mahogany desk.

The woman looked kind. She was an older lady, likely a grandmother, and so _tall_ for a woman. She had short white hair and a smile that was one of the most genuine Emily had ever seen in her life.

"I'm Shelia, the guidance counselor for your graduating class. I like to meet with all new students on their first day here at Bridgeton to make sure they're getting along nicely." She said.

Emily pursed her lips with a nervous smile, "Well I haven't even made it to my first class yet, but I don't plan on making too many waves before the end of the year."

Shelia nodded and Emily knew what was coming. She'd prepared herself for it by sitting stone cold on the edge of her bed and imagining each and every scenario she may come across, practicing showing no emotion whatsoever in response.

"I spoke with your therapist." Shelia said, "She says that you responded very well to treatment at Claymoore, that you haven't missed a session since reunification with your parents and you're taking your medication as directed."

Emily didn't bother correcting her. She didn't need word getting around to her teachers that she'd kneecapped a nurse by kicking him on her first day at Claymoore or that she refused to go to group therapy because she wouldn't listen to a dozen brainwashed teenagers recite lies that they'd been coached into believing about themselves.

"Now, she _did_ say that it doesn't look like you've made an appointment with your new therapist since the move. Would you like some help with that? I was an adolescent therapist for a long time before taking up shop here at Bridgeton High and still have a few colleagues that I recommend from time to time."

She had no plans to attend another therapy session.

"That's fine, thanks. I'd like to get settled in for a few weeks first." Emily said.

Shelia seemed content with that response. She stood from her leather office chair and opened the heavy door that somehow kept them secluded from the rest of the world. "Coach Langford is going to be tickled to have you in his class." She said, and then placed her hand on Emily's shoulder as she made it through the doorway.

"If you start having... _those thoughts_... again, please know that my door is always open."

Emily squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and wished that she'd taken another pill. She shrugged the woman's hand off of her shoulder, turning and flashing her a sarcastic smile.

"I'm fine, thanks."

She walked away before the urge to explode could overwhelm her, making her way through the unfamiliar hallways as slowly as possible. Unlike her home, Bridgeton High wasn't new. It looked to Emily like it hadn't been updated since the sixties or later, maybe even not since it'd been built. Each classroom had window units instead of a central heating and air system, the murals on the walls were faded and there wasn't a single vending machine in sight.

She found her classroom halfway through the class, knocking before entering and trying her damndest to draw little attention to herself as she scanned the room for an empty desk. The only one available was right in the center of all the others.

_"Thank god,"_ Emily thought, _"Maybe I can blend in."_

She kept her head down as she squeezed through all the other desks, avoiding eye contact or physical contact or any other sort of contact that might be accidentally had with one of these strangers. There was a negging at her sleeve though, like a soft finger tapping on her shoulder meant to say, _"Excuse me? May I have your attention, please?"_

She looked up for barely a moment and saw a lone familiar face amongst the sea of teenagers. A blue haired boy that she'd shared far too many cigarettes with in the span of just an hour and a half, maybe less. Judd was staring right back at her, he didn't try to hide that she'd stolen his attention, but Emily again cast her eyes down as she settled into her desk, her back facing him now.

That burning feeling of his envy colored eyes on the back of her neck remained throughout the class. It made her self conscious of her hair, did she need to touch up her roots? Had someone stuck something on her back when she was dissociating?

The class dragged and eventually restlessness caught up with her. She began dozing off with her cheek resting on her palm. The sound of books slamming and a bell ringing is what woke her.

After a very brief chat with her history teacher she made way for her newly assigned locker. It was between her first and second classes of the day, she became a ghost walking through the cramped hallways. No one even seemed to notice a new girl that had transferred there so close to graduating for good. Emily began struggling with the combination to the lock, soon becoming frustrated with the damn thing.

"The combinations don't work." A startling, husky voice said from behind her. Just a moment later the shiny glimmer of metal passed by her face as a knife was shoved between the locker door and it's frame.

It popped open.

"Thanks... Are you allowed to bring knives here?" She asked. Judd chuckled but didn't respond as she pulled a small stack of sketchbooks out of her backpack and shoved them into the hole in the wall.

Judd snaked his long, lanky are over Emily's head, blanketing her with his y'all frame, and snatched one of the books from the locker. "What's this?" He said and began flipping through the pages, assuming it would be snatched out of his grip soon enough.

Emily continued filing through the contents of her back back, deciding what was necessary for her to lug around for the rest of the day.

"Did you draw all of these?" Judd asked.

"It came from _my_ backpack, didn't it?"

She looked up at him and saw his eyebrow cock, "Feisty." He said under his breath.

Emily grabbed the sketchbook from his hands and shoved it back in her locker, pushing the door shut behind it. The second bell rang. "Thanks for the help, I'll try out a bobby pin next time."

She backed away from Judd, as he was already standing far too close for comfort, and melted into the sea of people. Though he could still pick out her pink topknot until she rounded the corner to the maths wing.

"Who's the new chick, Juddy?" A fat fuck of a kid said as he approached him.

Judd cut his eyes at the Bilzerian brothers. They were good to smoke with and nice companions for when he needed out of trouble, given who their father was and all, but most humans annoyed Judd in general and they were no exception.

"Some crazy bitch, I heard." He said, and popped open the locker yet again.

Val chuckled from behind him, "I hear the crazy ones can take cock like a champ, all three holes."

Judd filed through the sketchbooks until he found the same one from a few moments ago and slipped it out, slamming the door again and turning to the two menaces, "That's what I'm trying to find out, cumstains. Now fuck off."

He shoved the book into the back of his binder and ditched the rest of his classes.

* * *

The week persisted and Emily continued to fall asleep on US Gov. Sleep wasn't coming to her these days unless it was when she needed to stay awake the most. When the weekend finally came, she slept all day and stayed up all night and dragged her feet down the hallways all over again come Monday morning.

The desks they'd sat at on that first day had turned into their assigned seats for the semester. To Emily's right was a kid that had to use a new age typewriter to do work and take notes because his handwriting was such shit that no one could decipher it, to her left was a girl that almost always hid a library book in front of her issued textbook. She wanted to talk to her, the girl was reading Jane Eyre. Emily hated that book but it was rare to find someone her age that read the classics.

A gift was waiting on her desk that day, along with a love note.

_"Wake the fuck up."_ it read. The sticky note was stuck to a tall cup of cheap, delicious gas station coffee. Cappuccino, actually, she realized upon taking the first sip. It warmed her cheeks and brought life to her pounding temples. She looked around the room to survey who might have left her this lovely pot of gold, but the only person she could rule out was that kid with the damn typewriter.

She was greeted with a different flavor of gas station coffee every day that week, and on Friday, another note.

_"Favorite flavor? Anything other than black makes you a pussy."_

Emily smiled to herself. She pulled out her colored pencils and began doodling on the small square of paper. As class went on, Judd tried to peer over the rows of people to see exactly what she was doing, but it was useless. He tapped his foot against the floor anxiously and drummed against his desk until the bell rang, then he waited patiently for everyone else to file out so that he could swipe the sticky note without anyone noticing.

He held it up in front of his face before starting toward his next class. On it was an impressive drawing of an IV bag, filled halfway with espresso colored liquid and milky foam. It was labeled _64 CCs Caffeine_. The tube was twisted into the shape of a heart and at the bottom of the paper there were droplets of actual coffee spilled.

_"Whatever 'expressos' your mood each morning."_

If that were the case, she was getting black every single day, Judd thought.

Maybe with a little bit of sugar.

~

Thunder cracked and lightning lit up the dark, cloudy sky as Judd skidded around the corner, flying like a bat out of hell through the school parking lot. He'd hung around for a while smoking a blunt with some friends, but a torrential downpour was scheduled to hit Bridgeton any minute now. He needed to make sure all of his raccoons were accounted for and cozied up in the crawl space before they were flooded out.

A mist of rain began coating the windshield. The wipers on his old Jeep Liberty hadn't worked since long before he'd been gifted it and it was always a bitch to drive once a storm really started coming down.

Something was coming up on his right. Another student that was about to get drenched if they didn't start hauling ass down the sidewalk.

"Fuckin' idiot." Judd grumbled to himself as he sped by them.

It was only by chance that he glanced up at his rear view mirror to see pink locks whipping around the girl's face as the wind picked up.

Judd's foot met the brake pedal and his Liberty came to a screeching, rubber on asphalt burning halt. He threw it in reverse and Emily noticed it back tracking toward her. She wasn't so surprised to see Judd Birch leaning over the passenger seat to roll down the window.

"I'm not drunk anymore." He said.

Emily rested her arms against the edge of the window as she leaned in to talk to him and Judd couldn't help but to remember that this was exactly how every _TakeVan_ porno started.

"But you're high?" She asked. A half smoked blunt sat in his ashtray.

Judd rolled his eyes, "I'm _always_ high. Quit being such a goody-goody and get the fuck in the car."

She cut her eyes at him but it was 100% directed at herself. She didn't like the way her heart knocked against her rib cage when he cursed at her, nor the way her immediate response to him popping up randomly was to interact with him instead of running away.

"You really wanna swim home? Fine, have it your way—" Judd began to release the brake but stopped when she reached inside and unlocked the door herself. "That's what I thought."

Emily immediately pulled her two-sizes-too-big hoodie over her head, leaving her in a normal fitting t-shirt and leggings. Judd hadn't seen her in something that actually fit her since the part at his house three weeks, he realized. Not a lick of her skin was ever visible at school, despite the fact that she still put effort into her hair and makeup.

She told him that it was the new cookie cutters off of Native Circle.

"Why do you stay so covered up?" Judd asked as he offered her his open pack of cigarettes. She declined and pulled her own out of her bag.

The Pall Mall smelled so sweet as the end burned and smoke entered her lungs.

"I get really cold." She lied.

Judd slowed way down from his normal speed of eighty miles an hour through a speed zone. He took it nice and slow, no longer barreling through yellow lights and yield signs to make it home as fast as possible.

"Stop at the end of the road, my stepdad will flip his shit if he sees me in the car with you."

He passed by rows of houses without knowing which one was hers, stopping at the end of the street just as she'd asked. Judd put the car in park, noticing her reluctance to step out. Another crack of lightning shook his Jeep and in an instant, the sky fell. Fat, heavy raindrops landed on the windshield like grenades, turning it into a screen of water that he'd have to make due with on his way home.

Judd grabbed the half smoked blunt from his ashtray. He'd be waiting out the storm for a little while, it seemed.

"And here I was thinking that maybe you had a wild side." He offered her the blunt and she declined.

"You're one to talk." She said, lifting her feet into his dashboard. "Coffee? Really? Slow down, Steve-O, you don't want anyone to find out you aren't half as empathetic as you put on."

Judd smiled, his body becoming comfortable under the effect of his second smoke sesh of the evening. "All right, how'd you figure me out?"

She pointed at his rear view mirror and sucked down another lung full of smoke. On the glass was the second sticky note, the one with his terrible handwriting and her lovely little doodle.

"Fuck." He said. Suddenly Judd didn't appreciate being the only one high anymore.

Emily grabbed the aux cord and stuck it in the end of her phone, Judd knew she wasn't going anywhere soon. She'd already made herself too comfortable with her shoes kicked off and feet propped up. He could finally see the curve of her thighs against the skin tight leggings and in his inebriated state of mind, oh, he just wanted to eat her up.

"What do you like?" She asked while scrolling through her Spotify playlists.

Judd offered her what was left of the blunt again and she stared at it for a moment before reluctantly accepting. They traded vices, with her taking a long hit off of the blunt and him dragging the smoke from her stoge. He wondered if she tasted like these terrible things, smokey and bitter. Probably not, Judd thought, the few times he'd been in her presence she always reeked of sweet watermelon bubblegum.

"Older shit. Nothing faggy."

"Well that sure narrows it down."

She turned it to Led Zeppelin and hit shuffle. Emily folded her arm behind her head and leaned back in the seat. They sat like that through a few songs, passing the paraphernalia back and forth and enjoying the silence of another human, watching as the air around them became thick with smoke and the windows fogged.

"Fuck." She groaned as her high set in. "You're gonna get me in trouble if you keep showing up and smoking me out."

Judd's stomach twisted upon hearing her curse. It was like hearing an angel swear, wrong and vile in every way but their voice is so silky smooth that you just want to hit rewind and listen to it again. He turned his head toward her and saw the blunt between her lips, the whites of her eyes clashing against deep blue.

Wickedness settled into Judd's mind as he filed through all the things he'd like to do to this girl.

"You don't seem like the type to get in trouble much." He said. "Let me guess, only child? Daddy's little girl? Mom's your best friend and you moved here for one of their well paying jobs as a corporate zombie?"

Emily pulled her feet off the dashboard and moved to put her shoes back on, Judd panicked, thinking he'd pushed too far.

"Two out of four, not bad." She said as she leaned over in the seat, her hair falling in front of her face. "Only child. My stepdad's a dick and mom's a gelatinous pushover. They say we moved here for his job but I think he just wants us alone, away from the rest of our family."

"He probably wants to fuck you." Judd said.

Emily's skin sprouted goosebumps. She cut her eyes up at Judd and her gaze was much sharper than the blade of his knife.

"What? You don't think so?" He pressed further. It was nice to see pretty girls uncomfortable. "Older dude living with some spineless single mom and her hot teenage daughter? Yeah, he wants to shove his cock in you."

Her ears burned and suddenly she felt way too exposed. Emily tugged her hoodie back over her head and it covered up any indication that she had breasts or hips that one might find attractive.

"Smooth, Judd." She said, obviously annoyed. She tried to pull on the door handle but heard the lock click just in time.

Judd's finger was resting on the lock button when she looked back at him.

"You mad at me?" He asked, and though his voice was naturally gravely and dark, he still sounded syrupy sweet. "That's fine, you can be pissed at me for telling the truth. But I'm still getting your number before I let you out of my car."

Emily pulled the lock manually but he clicked it again.

"What the fuck for?" She spat.

Judd kept one hand on the lock and reached across her lap to the glove compartment, pulling it open and lifting up an ounce of pretty green leaves that had her enamored instantly.

"So I can keep getting you in trouble."


	3. Heavy Lesbian Presence

One o'clock in the morning was Emily's favorite hour. On Saturday nights, when neither of her parents had to work the next day, she'd keep her ears open for their footsteps on the stairs leading up to their bedroom. After that, she could finally strip out of the oversized clothes she adorned when they were awake.

She enjoyed the silence, but it made her eerily aware of her own thoughts, so she tied up her hair and popped in her earbuds, turning on one of the many hours long "focus" soundtracks that were bookmarked on her phone.

That was how she sat now — surrounded by slightly less boxes than the other three weeks since moving back home. She'd taken time to fill up her bookshelf and unpack her art supplies and clothes, but anything else remained tucked away in cardboard. Her desk was scattered with her muse for the night, charcoal pencils of various colors and smudge sticks. Inspiration came to her easily.

She was halfway through outlining hands that mimicked those in _The Creation of Adam_ when the headphones were ripped out of her ears. The smooth melodies that'd worked her into a trance were pierced through by a much louder, deafening foghorn.

_Incoming Facetime..._

Emily sighed, the number calling her wasn't saved in her phone but she had an inkling as to who it might be.

"Maybe a text first from now on." She said, pushing the earbuds back in.

Judd was happy when she set the phone up against the wall and got comfortable. He could finally see some skin through the camera lens — the contrast of her shoulders against thin spaghetti straps, the bend of her knee against her ample thigh as her foot was propped up on her seat. He saw that her fingers were dark from the charcoal and that she was working on a drawing much like the one in the sketchbook he'd stolen.

"Did I interrupt your doodling?" He asked.

Emily peered up at him with a humored smirk, her wispy fly-aways falling in front of her face. "Charcoal drawings — and yes, in fact, you almost blew out my eardrums."

He noticed the soft pink backdrop behind her, the walls had been painted before she'd even stepped foot in this new house. Everything about her was so _fluorescent_ , like a sea of spring pastels floating on top of a dreamy blue sky, a soft summer sunset.

"Did you call just to watch me 'doodle'?" She asked without ever taking her eyes off of the parchment laid out in front of her.

Judd was only sitting in his room when he'd decided to make the call. Wild lavender sprigs in a video game had reminded him of her earlier in the evening and ever since then he couldn't smoke enough to push her out of his brain.

"Is that okay?" He asked.

She looked up at him again, suspiciously, and then started working with a smudge stick to add depth to her piece. "I guess, but I don't think you'll find it very exciting."

"Yeah?" He said. "You don't know shit about what I find exciting."

Emily stopped, her hand was beginning to cramp up and now was a good break point in her work. She rolled her wrist and leaned back in her chair, giving Judd a nice look at just how far the neck of her tank top dipped.

"Tell me then."

Judd's breath hitched in his throat. He didn't like the cock of her eyebrow paired with the tone in the voice — bratty — as if she were challenging him. He found it annoying, but at the same time so painfully adorable.

"Come over and I'll show you."

She laughed, "Jeez, you really do wanna see me in a load of trouble, huh? They'd have a police report filed before I even made it there."

Emily stood up to make sure her door was still locked (for the fourth time that night), revealing to Judd the beauty of her thighs. When she was swallowed up under pounds of clothing it seemed as if there was close to no form in her figure, but he could see now that wasn't true. The meat against her muscles jiggled ever so slightly.

"Fine, I'll come to you then."

"Judd, I don't think that's—"

"Come on," He whined, "quit being such a fuckin' priss. I'll sneak in your window, you can bore me to death with your art, and I'll be gone before they even know I'm there."

Emily chewed on her bottom lip.

Why the hell was she even considering this as a valid option? She _knew_ that her parents would find out. Hell, she'd be surprised if they didn't have fucking cameras set up in her room right now.

Something about this guy made it increasingly difficult for her to say no to him.

"I don't even know you, dude." She said. "Like, are you just trying to fuck me? Because if that's the case I'm not interested."

Judd shook his head, _tsk_ -ing his tongue against his teeth, "Rude. Don't I look like a gentleman to you, Em?"

Her heart sank into the dark pit of her stomach. She'd always hated nicknames, but they sounded so delicious pouring out of his mouth. She sighed and thought to herself, _fuck it_.

"Okay. You can come over." She said. Judd had already been pulling his hoodie over his head. He clasped his car keys in his hand and flipped the light in his room off. "But you have to be so, _so_ quiet. Seriously."

"Chill out." He snapped. Emily could see the overhead light in his Jeep come on for just a moment. "Trust me when I say this isn't the first time I've done this, and I've _never_ been caught. Just open your window and text me which house is yours, I'll be there in a few."

* * *

It wasn't twenty minutes later that Emily heard a scuffling against her windowpane. Judd was lifting his tall figure inside headfirst, courteous enough to keep his shoes off of her bed as he stepped down onto the floor.

"You shouldn't keep your bed against a window, that's how chicks get snatched up in the middle of the night."

"Are you speaking from experience or just being creepy?"

He flashed her a smile as he leaned over her shoulder and admired the work she'd gotten done in his absence. Judd was impressed. He wasn't much of an artist, aside from the occasional tagging, but even he knew that her shade work and highlighting was near perfect.

But there was a single stray line that stuck out like a sore thumb at the tip of one finger. It'd been scribbled there by accident when Judd's incoming phone call nearly ruptured Emily's eardrums. Charcoal doesn't erase, it only smudges, so she'd left it alone. He almost felt bad for messing up something so close to perfection.

Around the room sat stacks of more and more artwork. There were full canvas paintings leaned against the wall and rolls of parchment laid in a pile in the corner. Judd took it upon himself to file through them all, each one more impressive than the last.

"You're really talented, y'know." He said.

Emily peered over her shoulder at him. She wasn't meaning to be a bad host, but she was _so close_ to finishing her piece and if she stopped now she might lose interest completely.

"You came over to tell me about yourself, not talk more about me."

Judd took a seat on a stack of boxes beside her desk that faced her. She was so deep in concentration that he thought his voice may just end up being white noise to her, did it really even matter what he said?

"What do you wanna know?"

She picked a bright orange out of the scattered pencils without so much as looking up at them. "You could start with why you keep popping up out of nowhere."

Is there ever an easy way to say, _'Because you look so sweet and innocent that I can't stop myself from wanting to pop your cherry'_? If so, Judd searched his mind for it but to no avail. Instead he cocked his head, she really was cute as a button, even cuter when made slightly nervous.

"Don't let this go to your head, but you're pretty easy on the eyes." Judd said. "And you're not _completely_ annoying like most of the idiots I hang around."

Emily put down her pencil gently and placed her chin in her hand, smiling at him with a grin that had Judd waiting on the edge of his seat for the sarcasm that was to come. "Would you look at that, maybe you really are a gentleman, Judd."

He pulled the stolen sketchpad out from underneath his jacket, "Which is exactly why I wanted to return this, now that I've thoroughly digested everything in it." He dropped it on the corner of her desk. "Lots of nudies in here, Em."

She pointed to a box stacked high above all the others in the corner, "I can't reach that box. Get it down for me and you're welcome to sneak a peek at the real dirty shit."

_That_ caught his attention. Judd easily pulled the cardboard box off of its hiding place in the back of the room, it was heavy with stacks upon stacks of sketchbooks. He could feel them sliding around on the inside, oh what details they may include. He sat the box down on her bed and pulled it open, taking the first book off the top and folding the cover over.

Judd kicked off his shoes and got comfortable. He crawled up to the headboard and shifted in his seat, trying to nonchalantly readjust his stiffening boner into his waistband. He recognized some of the figures that were intertwined in pencil; Bokuto and Akaashi, Kuroo and Kenma, Inuyasha and Kagome, hell even Richie and Eddie.

"I didn't take you as much of a nerd."

"Hey—" She began.

"Shut up, it's a compliment. I fucking love some Tokyo Ghoul and Attack On Titan. I even have all of the Avatar comics, if you wanna borrow them some time."

Emily turned halfway in her seat, it was strange to hear Judd acting like an actual human being instead of a cocky stoner. And she absolutely _did_ want to borrow those comics, though she would never promise he'd see them again.

What Judd truly hadn't expected to see in those sketchbooks was such a heavy lesbian presence. He flipped slowly through the pages, blood feeding into his cock with every turn.

"Are you a dyke or something?" He asked. She laughed.

Emily was done with her charcoal drawing. She was never one to sit and linger on her artwork. She didn't critique herself for hours on end like some other artists. Her inspiration had always been like a nagging in the back of her head, similar to a song playing on repeat in your mind until you finally give in and listen to it, no matter how terrible it is. Once she visualized it internally, it had to come out, it begged to be put on a canvas. After that, it was over. She tore the paper away from her oversized sketchpad and rolled it up, tossing it into the corner with the rest of them.

Judd went after it. He tossed the homemade porn back into the box and crossed the room, unfurling the scroll and admiring it up close. She'd turned that smudge into a lit cigarette, the embers being the only hint of color on the page. God and Adam were passing a stoge, just as the two of them had already done on multiple occasions.

"So this is what being an artist is all about?" He asked, "Making fuck ups look intentional, living out your suppressed sexual urges on paper?"

She lit her first cigarette since sitting down at her desk and took a seat in the open window sill. Her bare foot hung outside, dangling against the side of the house. It made Judd uncomfortable, reminding him of the nightmares he'd had as a kid where his toes would slip out from beneath his blanket and quickly be cut off by the sharp claws of some monster under the bed.

"I'm not gay, Judd." Emily said. The cigarette bounced up and down between her fingers nervously.

He rolled up the parchment and held it up, "Mind if I keep this?" to which she shrugged in response.

Judd stole from her pack of Pall Malls, perching himself opposite her in the window. It wasn't a large opening — if it wasn't made for one body, it very well wasn't made for two. The rough fabric of his jeans brushed against her bare knee and their feet grazed past each other as they swung gently back and forth.

"Tell me something about you that nobody knows." Emily said.

Judd watched a glimmer of excitement shine in her eyes, she liked secrets. He'd bet that she was good at keeping them, too. Maybe she even had a few of her own that he could coax out of her.

"I have a small army of raccoons that I've trained to do my bidding." He said bluntly.

"You're full of shit." Emily replied.

"It's true. I originally just wanted them to terrorize my siblings, but they're good for other stuff too." He took a long drag and then blew the smoke out the window. "Like catering dates that I ask chicks out on."

Emily couldn't lie, if that were true then she was thoroughly impressed. She found herself less relaxed than before, the cigarette doing little to calm her nerves over the expectation that Judd was about to make a move. She didn't even know if she _wanted_ him to make a move. She slid her back slightly away from the frame, fixing their legs against each other, anything to make herself more open to him. His emerald green eyes reminded her of the sinful greed and jealousy she'd been taught to avoid in sunday school. Jesus Christ, did she feel like a glutton. Emily enjoyed having all of his attention, she wanted it indefinitely.

"Any hobbies?" She asked, finally ashing her cigarette onto the grass.

Judd scoffed. He wasn't willing to ask her out without making her sweat for it.

"Video games, anime, writing my manifesto, terrorizing my family. Sometimes I go to fight night at the Bilzerians' place, mostly only when I'm out of weed though."

"They sell?" Emily asked. "Because I'm still looking for a dealer --"

Judd's gaze became heavy in a snap, "You're not going over there." He said, cutting her off. The air around them settled into a suffocating, warm blanket. His cocky attitude had hardened out of nowhere, his smile straightening out into an angry scowl. "They're creeps. I've already caught them talking about how hot you are so I don't want you going over there alone. If you need weed, I got you. Understand?"

His sudden need to protect her was masked by possessiveness. Emily felt unbelievably small under his intense stare.

Judd leaned forward, lowing his voice. "I said, do you understand, Emily?"

Emily's mouth became dry as all the moisture in her body rushed between her legs. Judd noticed the goosebumps on her thighs and smirked.

"Okay." She said quietly, "I understand."

He figured she'd suffered enough. Besides, Judd had gotten a feel for what she was about. He slipped out the window and she hung her other leg out the side, sitting on the edge as if she wanted to follow him into the dark.

"Let me take you out." Judd said as he stuck the rolled up parchment into his back pocket.

"To meet your raccoons?" She flicked her cigarette out onto the wet grass. It was just past three in the morning, dew was beginning to settle on the ground and the late summer sunrise would be coming up in a few hours.

Judd stepped forward, he placed his hands against the window frame on either side of her, leaning in close enough to see her chest stop rising completely as she held her breath.

"My raccoons stay home. The only girls I bring home are the ones I plan on fucking." He watched as she swallowed hard and her eyes became hazed over with subtle desire. "Like I said, I may be a dick but I'm a fucking gentleman too. So no, you're not meeting my raccoons."

"When?" Emily asked.

He looked past her toward her bedroom door. There were boxes stacked in front of it, ones so heavy that they were beginning to cave in under the weight of one another. Judd got the impression that behind that door, she wasn't safe. Or at least she didn't think she was.

"I'm assuming you have a curfew, right?" He asked, and she nodded. "Right. How's Thursday night? I'll sneak you out, take you somewhere... nice."

"Judd, I can't --"

"Yes you _can_. I've been in your bedroom for two fucking hours, that's way more risky than you slipping out of this window and going on an adventure."

Suddenly Emily felt herself falling, supported only by his lanky arm around her waist. Judd had grabbed her by the waist and pulled her off the edge of the window, her feet sinking into the wet grass below. There was such little space between them that she felt the cool vinyl of the side of the house pressed against her back as she was thrust into the outside world.

"What the hell are you doing?!" She whisper-shouted, but laughter followed soon and Judd joined her in that aspect. His arm stayed snaked around her hips as he towered over her.

"See, you're already out. No turning back now." His smile was infectious and his fingers pressed into her skin as if they belonged there.

Emily stared up at him, he had a good four inches of height on her and somehow that felt nice, not intimidating like when Bruce was the one towering over her.

"All right." She said. "We can go out. But I'm holding you to those Avatar comics."

"You can hold me to whatever you want." Judd growled.

She rolled her eyes and swatted him away from her, lifting herself back up into the safety of her bedroom. Judd chuckled and backed away into the shadows of cookie cutter houses. Emily's heart fluttered as she clicked the window locked and drew the blinds closed. She checked the lock to her door again (six times now?) then rifled through the box that he'd pulled down. Who needs to look up porn when you can create your own?


	4. Icarus and the Sun

Late summer sunsets in Bridgeton were always repulsive to Judd. A cotton candy pink sky scattered with wispy violet clouds. They sickened him.

He climbed out onto the roof of his house and lay back against the shingles, staring up at them. It was a Tuesday and he hadn't spoken to that girl since he'd left her house on Saturday night. Judd liked to pretend that she was insignificant enough in his mind that he couldn't be bothered remembering her name. Though, if that were the case, why did the promise of color have him climbing out of his bedroom window, closer to the sky as if he were Icarus and she was the sun?

"What are you doing out there, weirdo?" Leah asked from the safety of their shared home. She stood with her head hanging out the windowsill.

"Fuck off, Leah. Get out of my room." Judd spat. There was little vigor in his tone.

She dipped her head back inside and was completely content with removing herself from his depressing bedroom, when an issue struck Judd that only she could help with.

"No, wait, Leah—" He called out, "I need your help, get out here."

Leah dipped through the window and seated herself a few feet away from him on the roof. She remembered the days when their parents would warn them about coming out here, about how it was too dangerous (the only dangerous part was when Judd dangled Nick over the edge).

"You never ask me to come out here with you anymore." She said. Believe it or not, there had been a time when she and Judd were close. He was her big brother, and she still thought of him as such.

He fiddled with his fingers, knees brought up to his chest. "You're an annoying chick, right?" He asked, and Leah laughed.

"Something like that, I guess."

"I mean, we're different, you and I." Judd continued. "We're complete opposites."

Leah wasn't an idiot, nor was she blind — especially when it came to her siblings. She'd seen him stopping for coffee every morning since the second week of school, she'd even watched as his eyes lingered on some new girl in the hallways. Leah always knew when he was coming in late because of the loud muffler on his Jeep, he parked it right outside of her window and it almost always woke her up.

"Is this about that girl with pink hair?" She asked. "She's cute. I saw you standing by her locker last week."

"She'd be cuter if she put out." He mumbled, to which Leah slapped him on the chest. "What?! I just meant that she isn't _easy_ like a lot of the girls I take out."

Leah's eyes got wide, "Jeez, I didn't even know you _'took out'_ girls. Not since Rowan, anyways."

He winced at the sound of his ex's name being spoken. This, like most things, called for a cigarette. He reached just inside the window and grabbed his pack of Camels, somehow he didn't quite fancy them like he used to. They didn't tear at his throat like Pall Malls did.

"I _don't_ take girls out." He said, exhaling heavily.

Leah waited for him to reveal more, but it was evident enough that she was going to have to pry it out of him. "Well, if I had to guess, this girl is nothing like _she-who-shall-not-be-named._ You're not gonna get into her pants by taking her to rob a bank. What does _she_ like to do?"

Judd shrugged, "I don't know. Art? I have one of her drawings. There's a lot of books in her room. Coffee, anime."

"Does she like animals?" Leah asked.

"She didn't freak the fuck out when I mentioned my raccoons, so."

"Ooooh, your _raccoons._ " She teased, cocking her eyebrow, "You really _are_ serious about wanting to bone her." Judd moved like he was going to shove her off the roof and she started laughing. It felt nice for Leah to have a sliver of her brother back, she thought, he hadn't been the same since the big break up. "I'm joking, asshole. But don't worry, I know exactly where you should take her."

* * *

Emily sat at the eerily quiet dinner table on Wednesday night. Bruce was working late at the office so it was just her mother sitting silently at the opposite end. Baked chicken, broccoli, and carrots; her real dad had always been the chef in the family.

"How's school coming along, Emmy? Making any friends?" Her mother asked. The small talk was painfully forced and awkward.

"I'm just keeping to myself." Emily said, pushing the bland vegetables around on her plate. "No real point in making friends when I graduate in eight months."

Emily's post-graduation plans hung in the air like a hollow threat. How many kids _actually_ end up moving out the second that they turn eighteen? Probably a good amount, if they were subject to the same shit she was.

"I'm worried about you, Emi—"

She scoffed. It was fucking comical when this woman pretended to care. "My bad, I managed to master the whole 'tolerance' thing but I'm still working on the outbursts. That's what they called them at Claymoore — any ounce of real fucking emotion is considered an outburst."

Her mother pursed her lips and grabbed her plate. She was always best at avoiding uncomfortable situations all together rather than addressing _why_ they were uncomfortable to begin with. "I want you to be happy here, Emily. Really, I do. I wish you could see that."

"I was _'happy'_ in Massachusetts." Emily mumbled.

The sound of porcelain shattering in the sink caused her to jump so hard she dropped her fork. Emily turned to see her mother standing at the counter, blood pooling in her palm from the shards, and an absolutely fed up look on her face. "Happy people don't swallow half a bottle of Xanax."

Emily sank into her seat as her mother wrapped a towel around her hand.

"Happy people don't turn their bodies into cutting boards, or make up _sick_ _lies_ about their family." Her mother continued to push and push and if there was one thing that therapy had taught Emily, it was how to take the abuse quietly.

Fear had ruled Emily's life for some time now, ever since her father passed and her mother remarried. It came in different forms, originated from different sources, but it all felt the same to her. She didn't fear her mother, but Jesus Christ did she fear the control that was tied like a noose around her neck.

"Sorry." She said quietly. Emily wasn't hungry anymore, she scraped her plate into the trash and loaded it into the dishwasher, picking the shards out of the sink and disposing of them so that her mother might think her apology was truthful.

The bleeding slowed enough that her mother was able to remove the towel from her hand. Emily stood up on the counter and pulled out the old first aid kit. It was a shame that she knew exactly how to clean up wounds like this. She sat on the edge with her mother in front of her just like when she was a little girl, cleaning off the cut with an alcohol pad and then taping the skin together with butterfly strips.

"I have made a few friends, actually. A few kids in my US Gov class were wanting to get together to study Thursday night, if it's okay with you."

Her mother glanced up from the perfectly placed strips on her hand, "A get together on a _Thursday_?"

Emily rolled her eyes but smiled, "We have quizzes every Friday."

The older woman thought for a moment. She teetered on the thin line that blurred between being angry with her daughter and elated that she might be healing. "Fine." she said, "But you're home by ten and the location on your phone stays _on_. Deal?"

Emily sealed the promise with a kiss to her mother's palm, "Deal."

* * *

Judd stood in the hallway of the electives wing of Bridgeton High that Thursday afternoon. He didn't take electives, having settled for a free block at the end of his day so that he could sneak cigarettes behind the auditorium stage. The art room door was covered in shattered stained glass pieces together like a mismatched puzzle.

The final bell rang and out filed the "creative" kids at the school. He hung back against the lockers, waiting for his date to follow.

Emily turned the corner without noticing Judd. She was walking slowly, a mechanical pencil clasped between her teeth as she flipped through a notebook of heavyweight paper. Judd only had to take a few steps thanks to his long legs before catching up to her and placing his hand on the small of her back.

Her head whipped toward him with a hard, closed off expression before she noticed who it was, then she softened into the tulip petal that she usually resembled.

"You weren't in US Gov this morning." She stated plainly, though Judd recognized that it was a question.

"Miss me that much already?" He asked, and she rolled her eyes. "I was getting shit ready for our date."

He followed her to the second floor where her locker was located, taking it upon himself to force it open for her.

"About that, change of plans."

For a moment, Emily thought she saw Judd's scowl drop even further into a genuine frown.

"You can pick me up at six and I need to be home before ten."

"Oh, come on." Judd said. He took the heavy books from her hands, loading them into the locker for her. "I thought the whole point was that you'd be sneaking out?"

The locker slammed shut, echoing throughout the empty hallway. They were alone now, more alone than they'd been in her bedroom or even in his own house.

"I'm not budging, Judd. Pick me up at six or don't pick me up at all."

Her sudden assertiveness made Judd's chest feel heavy. He could tell it was a facade by the way she nervously chewed on her bottom lip. _Kudos to her for trying_ , he thought as he stepped forward, offering less space between the two of them. His eyes hardened as they watched her breathing halt completely.

"I'll have you home by ten, but don't be surprised when you're begging me to sneak into your bedroom by eleven."

Emily's cheeks blushed just as pink as her hair. Out of all the books she'd ever read, she couldn't find a single word to respond with. Judd chuckled, he liked seeing her flustered. He liked _seeing her_. Period.

"Let me drive you home." He said abruptly, to which she refused. She wanted to walk home alone. It was nice out and she had too much on her mind to risk having her thoughts further clouded by a haze of THC and him.

"I'll see you in a few hours. I think you can handle being away from me for that long." Emily said with a cheeky grin. She began to step away from Judd and he could see the sheen of lip gloss against her lips.

He swore to himself that he'd find out what flavor she was wearing by the end of the night.

* * *

Judd ignored the raking of fingernails against his door. It pushed open as he was pulling his black hoodie over his head and stuffing the four essentials in his pockets: phone, keys, wallet, switchblade.

"Did you do what I said?" Leah asked from the doorframe.

Judd just grunted. He wouldn't admit that his retard of a sister actually had good ideas sometimes.

"Was she excited when you told her about it?" Leah continued.

"I haven't told her shit. It's a surprise."

Leah followed her brother down the stairs as he made his hasty retreat. "A _surprise_?!" Judd snagged the pack of cigarettes off of the sofa table, ignoring his sister the whole way. He rushed out the front door and started up the engine of his old Jeep, it roared to life.

"You really are America's sweetheart, Judd!" She yelled after him as he peeled out of the driveway and ripped down the street.

~

Emily stood in front of the full length mirror in her bedroom. She looked at the dip of her hips and placed her fingers against her ribs. She'd lost so much weight since her dad died.

Her phone buzzed on the corner of her desk and she leaned over to check it.

_I'm down the street. Hurry._

She pulled on her black windbreaker and zipped it all the way up to her neck, then pulled on her tennis shoes. She tried to slip out the door quietly but from the living room, a nauseating voice spoke.

"Where ya goin', Em?" Bruce said.

The TV was blaring football reruns when she peered around the corner. Her mother was leaned over in Bruce's protective embrace, seemingly fast asleep.

"Mom said I could go study with some friends." Emily said. He looked her up and down just as possessively as he was holding his wife. It made Emily feel cold even in the summer, even with a full wardrobe on.

"She didn't run that by me. You got a test coming up?" He asked.

"Yeah, tomorrow. Mom already gave me the okay on this." She said, fully aware that the tone she had often backfired.

Bruce pursed his lips, "I don't think it's a good idea to be distracted by a bunch of teenagers while studying for your first test." He said, then nodded back toward her hallway. "Why don't you just study alone tonight? You can go out with your friends next time."

Emily's blood ran hot, but she knew there was no use in arguing. There never was. If Bruce didn't feel like letting her go out, she simply wasn't going out. So she stomped back to her room and locked the door behind her, pushing the heavy stack of boxes back in front of it.

She dialed Judd's number and could have screamed when he answered immediately.

"Where are you?" He asked. His gravelly voice sounded like a breath of fresh air compared to Bruce's.

"Come to my window." She said abruptly, and Judd could tell she was on the brink of tears. "My step dad told me I can't go out so come to my window, we're going ahead with your plan."

Judd jumped out of his Jeep and started down the sidewalk, staying on the phone with her the whole time. "I'll be there in just a second. Are you okay? He didn't hurt you, did he?"

She unzipped her jacket and tossed it onto the floor of her closet. If she wasn't passing by her parents on her way in or out, there was no reason for her to hide her wardrobe.

"What? No, I'm fine. He just does this petty shit where he tries to control everything I do. Are you coming or not?" Emily heard her window slide up. Judd dipped his head beneath the pane and reached out toward her, covering his mouth with one finger.

She stepped onto the bed and leaned to duck out of the small opening, surprised when Judd grabbed her by the waist and set her feet down on the hard grass below. He pulled the window almost completely closed and grabbed her by the hand.

The only thing Emily could compare Judd's hand in hers to were the handcuffs that'd once been placed around her wrists. Except his hands were soft, his hands were protective, not restrictive. They were pulling her to safety and adventure, guiding her below the windows of the front of the house so they wouldn't be caught.

They dashed down the middle of the street with Judd pretty much dragging her along as his stride was much wider than hers.

"Slow down, slow down!" Emily chanted, and there was a hint of laughter in her voice as she saw Judd's Jeep parked just ahead.

Judd pulled the passenger side door open and helped her up into it, glancing back toward her house to make sure they hadn't been caught.

The coast was clear.

He threw the car in drive and pistoned around the block, leaving her personal Hell in the dust. Judd drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he skidded out of the neighborhood. He felt uneasy even with her relaxing safely in the seat next to him. Emily lifted her feet up onto the busted dashboard and fished her cigarettes out of her pocket.

"I shouldn't have made that joke the other day." Judd said. His jaw was clenched tight as he looked back and forth between her and the road. "The one about your step dad, it was shitty."

She rolled down the window and light smoke bellowed from between her pink lips.

"Look at me, Emmy." Judd reached his hand toward her face and she winced, clenching her eyes shut. His fingers froze midair. "I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? I just wanna get a good look at your pretty face."

He cupped her chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning her face toward him. The way she was acting, Judd had expected to see her lip split or eye blackened, but no — her skin was just as smooth as ever.

"I'm okay, Judd. I promise." Her voice shook at his touch.

His eyes burned into hers and he knew she wasn't telling the truth. Prying would only push her further into the shell that she'd built around herself, so he let it go. Judd stroked along her jaw with his thumb, allowing her to feel his rough fingerprint against her skin.

They pulled into a nearly empty, small parking lot belonging to a homey cafe.

_The Cat Cafe_ is what the sign on the building read.

"What's this?" Emily asked. Judd hopped out of the car and pulled her door open. He'd quickly grown accustomed to feeling the warmth of her touch, so he reached across her lap and clicked her seatbelt undone, then tugged her out of the car by the hand.

"It's the gayest shit I've ever done."


	5. Beautiful But Annihilating

Emily followed Judd up to the reception area counter. She'd expected the cafe to be exactly that, a cafe, but the front of the building was merely a waiting area. She recognized the girl at the counter from school, she had a purple pixie cut and wore a bright orange apron tied around her waist.

"Are you our six-thirty appointment?" She asked.

Judd rolled his eyes, "You know we are, Tallulah."

She smiled past him at Emily and collected a key ring from a hidden drawer. "Sweeten up, Judd. You're lucky I was able to get you guys in so last minute, we're usually booked up for weeks!"

Tallulah led the pair through a short hallway and stopped in front of a paned glass door. She unlocked it and held it open for the two of them, revealing a cozy little den. There was a single loveseat and a pair of recliners, half a dozen bookcases that were filled to the brim and categorized by genre. The lights were dimmed. What surprised Emily the most was that they weren't alone in the abode; a couple of little creatures lounged on the furniture as well.

"So this is why they call it _The Cat Cafe_." She said. A siamese cat rubbed affectionately against her calf. Tallulah nudged it gently back inside the room with her foot.

"Keep the door closed, they're escape artists. All of the cats in this room are up for adoption through the humane society. You've got the place booked for two hours." Tallulah's eyes darted between the two suspiciously, "No nasty business. I don't need you guys traumatizing the animals."

Judd shut the door on his sister's friend and locked it behind him. In an instant Emily was crouched down, coaxing the siamese into her lap. "Look at this sweet baby, Judd." She stroked his ears and he meowed up at her, begging her for a kiss.

Emily glanced up at Judd and saw him smiling down at her. Of course, he hid that smile once he noticed her watching. "I think he loves me. What do you think?"

"I think you should take him home, get a real rise out of your step dad."

Emily's heart fell. Being here almost allowed her to forget that anywhere else existed. She stood up and strolled over to one of the many bookcases, running her fingers along the spines. To Judd, she seemed to get lost in the endless titles.

There was something heartwarming about seeing someone so controlled come loose at the seams.

"Do you like it?" Judd asked nervously, though he crossed his arms over his chest as if to shield himself from possible rejection.

She tipped a thin book away from the case and held it in her hands. "I love it, but I'm not gonna lie, this isn't at all what I was expecting."

The two got comfortable on the loveseat and Judd propped his feet up on the coffee table in front of them. Emily sat cross legged beside him and tried not to act startled when he grabbed her by the ankles, tugging her legs across his lap. Judd sunk into the couch, his black and blue hair falling away from his face.

"What _were_ you expecting then?" He asked.

That same siamese made itself comfortable on Emily's stomach, kneading against her skin before curling up into a tiny ball of fur.

Emily shrugged. "I don't know. Getting high in your car."

Judd grinned, his pearlescent canines drawing her in. She wondered what it would feel like to have those teeth sinking into her skin.

"If that's your idea of a date then this is our third."

"Guess it's about time for me to start putting out then, huh?"

His eyebrow cocked. Emily could see his tongue press against the inside of his cheek. "You said it, not me."

A chunky black cat strolled across Judd's lap, lying down on top of Emily's legs and sealing their fate for the next two hours. She leaned back against the arm of the couch and opened the poetry book she'd chosen for herself, stroking the siamese lazily until it began purring against her abdomen. Judd did the same with the black cat, his free hand resting comfortably on her knee.

"Read to me." He said.

Her eyes snapped up to his with onset nervousness. "It's poetry. Do you even _like_ poetry?"

Judd's head rolled lazily against the back of the couch, his thumb stroking her leg in a soothing motion — much like he was the cat in his lap. "I like your voice, Em. You could be reading the Declaration of fucking Independence for all I care, I don't give a shit, I just wanna hear you talk."

Emily's heart beat against her chest like a bird trying to escape her ribcage. She flipped through the worn pages, scanning over the stanzas until she found one that spoke to her.

_There is a lion in my living room. I feed it raw meat_   
_so it does not hurt me. It is a strange thing_   
_to nourish what could kill you_   
_in hopes it does not kill you._   
_We have lived like this, it and I, for so many years._   
_Sometimes it feels like we have always lived like this._   
_Sometimes I think I have always been like this._

The two of them simmered on that poem for some time. Emily read it in her head over and over again and finally realized why it resonated with her so deeply.

"I think it's a metaphor for how we learn to tolerate abuse." She said, gaining Judd's attention. "After awhile we start to believe that just because someone isn't killing or hitting or raping us, that how we live is normal. But feeding into someone's manipulation doesn't mean that you aren't being manipulated, it kinda means the exact opposite, actually."

He squeezed her knee a little bit tighter. Emily hated the way it was so hard to read his features, she relied heavily on that unspoken language at home. But him — he almost always looks either furious or apathetic — though she was realizing that more often than not, he was simply content.

"You sound like you know a whole lot about tolerating abuse." He said, and Emily's jaw went taut. She was apparently much easier to read than he was. "You don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I'll pull it out of you eventually."

Tallulah unlocked the door and peeked her head inside, "You guys want any drinks? We are an _actual_ cafe, you know."

Judd glanced and Emily and she just shrugged, so he turned his attention back to the door. "Give me a coffee. Black."

"I'll just have water, please."

" _Please._ " Tallulah repeated, imitating her. "Jeez, how'd you cop such a sweet one this time, Judd?"

Judd seared as the girl shut the door, but Emily just giggled over his easily irritated nature. "You bring girls here a lot? And I thought I was special."

"You _are_ special, idiot." He said abruptly, then his jaw clenched shut, as if he hadn't meant to speak at all. "I mean, ugh — what I meant is no, I don't bring girls here a lot. I don't bring girls anywhere, actually."

Tallulah dropped off their beverages and locked the door behind her. The black cat excused itself from its resting place on Judd's lap, and the siamese on Emily's stomach did the same. She sat up and sipped her water before feeling Judd's grip tugging at her forearm.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"Just come the fuck here." He pulled her toward him back first and turned against the arm of the couch, resting her between his legs and against his chest. "And I _do_ like poetry, smartass. But I'm busy, I don't have much time to stop and actually read it. Maybe that's why I like hearing you read it to me."

Emily felt content right there, with her back resting against Judd's warmth. His arm wrapped around the front of her shoulders and, for once, another person's limbs didn't feel like a fucking straight jacket threatening to take away all of her freedom. She sunk into him, he rested his chin on top of her head and watched her nimble artist fingers turn through over the pages.

She continued to read to him. She read every poem in that book and when the last page turned, he gave her his phone to look up ones that she simply remembered and thought he might enjoy. Judd expressed his disdain for poets like Nakita Gill and Lang Leav and Emily reluctantly admitted that she couldn't stand Poe and would only tolerate Hemingway because of his love for polydactyl cats. And they stayed like that — back to chest, chin on head, wrapped around each other while simply allowing feedback to flow freely out of their minds until Tallulah again knocked on the door to let them know their time was up. It hadn't seemed like any time at all to Emily, but as they made their way outside, the sky told a different story.

Dark purple and orange clouds wisped across the sky. It was close to eight-thirty and Emily's parents would be trying to say goodnight to her soon enough.

Judd held open the door as she lifted herself into the passenger seat. He leaned against the inside of his car as she faced him, turned in her seat so that her feet swung back and forth off the ground. He lit a cigarette for them to share.

"When can I see you again?" Judd asked.

Emily noticed that he was staring at her lips when she stuck the cigarette between them. The smoked smelled exactly like him, or maybe it was the other way around, she wondered if they tasted identical as well. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to feel his calloused fingers push their way into her hair and his tongue beg for entry into her mouth.

"We have first block together, Judd." She replied.

Their fingers lingered against each other as they went to exchange the cigarette again. Judd let it fall to the concrete, stomping it out with his dirty white tennis shoes. He slid his fingers between hers and took a small step closer.

"You know what I mean, asshole." He said with his gaze darting between her eyes and lips. "When are you _really_ gonna let me sneak you out?" Judd's other hand went to her knee and slid underneath it, pulling her gently to the edge of the seat, closer to him. "You're already out anyways. You can come back to my house, we can watch a movie. My parents are annoying as shit but they don't ask questions."

Emily liked the way his thumb toyed with hers — cat and mouse, that was Judd's favorite game. He was the hungry, ravenous black cat with hypnotizing emerald eyes and she was the little mouse. She never stood a chance.

"Are you asking me to Netflix & Chill?" She asked with a shy smile on her face.

His head began turning to fit hers as they leaned into each other. "Again — you said it, not me."

She could feel his steady breathing on her face, _oh god_. He smelled like cigarettes and coffee with a hint of Big Red bubblegum.

"I-I wish I could..." She stammered. A warm late summer breeze blew between the two of them and they were so close that his wispy hair brushed against her forehead and vice versa. "I can't, Judd. I'm sorry."

He stopped moving. Judd quit leaning toward her completely and he stared at her for a prolonged moment as if to ask her "Is that your final answer?". When she didn't abruptly change her mind, he only nodded.

"Okay." He said. "That's okay, I get it. You can't turn a saint into a sinner after one date."

Judd lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. That kiss lingered on her skin, singeing into her skin like a iron branding. It was meant to show that he was being genuine, that he wasn't willing to push her into misbehaving if it wasn't what she wanted.

He pulled his hand out from under her knee and closed the door for her, rounding the hood of his Jeep and hopping into the driver's seat. He let Emily take the aux cord on the drive back and they jammed to the three Eagles songs that they made it through before turning into her neighborhood. Judd pulled around the block to the end of a cul de sac where no houses had been built yet. A dim light still hung in the sky but the streetlamps lining the sidewalks had already come to life for the evening.

"One for the road?" Judd asked as he pulled open his ashtray and revealed a pre-rolled joint.

Emily sighed defeatedly, "You really know the way to a girl's heart, Judd Birch."

He chuckled and killed his headlights before burning the tip of the paper. Before long, the two of them were surrounded by smoke and smiling lazily with bloodshot eyes. Judd never realized how well the colors pink and blue complimented each other until she looked up at him from her phone, the fluorescent light illuminating her face.

"You don't look like a stoner, y'know." He said, his voice hoarse from the cotton mouth.

"Yeah?" Emily replied. "What do I look like then?"

She brought her knees up to her chest and turned in her seat, her back resting against the door. Her sun kissed cheeks were tinted pink from an earlier coughing fit and the way she held the joint casually between her fingers made her look like a natural.

"There's, uh, there's only one poem I actually remember by heart and it's because we spent a fucking week analyzing it last year in American Lit." Judd looked down at his hands, his gaze interrupted by her offering him the joint. He took another hit to calm his nerves. " _If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annihilating._ "

"Sylvia Plath." Emily said softly.

Judd nodded. "You kinda remind me of that analogy. God, you're _so_ _fucking_ gorgeous, when I first saw you I wanted you to be the one to murder me because it would be a fucking treat to die looking at something so innocent."

"I'm not that innocent, Judd." Emily said, and Judd snuffed out the joint in his ashtray.

"I know that now. I can see it in your eyes when I raise my voice or grab your face." He watched as Emily's breath hitched in her throat. "That, like _that_. What are you so nervous for, Em? I haven't even tried to fuck you yet."

She couldn't respond. Her eyes had darkened and her throat felt incredibly dry. Suddenly she wished she'd kept that windbreaker on earlier, as she now felt very exposed in her white t-shirt. Emily knew her chest was reddening, she could feel the heat burning from the inside out.

"You want me to try to fuck you? I can. I can lay it on thick and you can hold out on me for a few more dates, but I _am_ going to fuck you. Let's go ahead and address that elephant in the room right now."

Still, no words would form in her mouth. Judd reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his finger, cupping her face in his hand. She leaned into his touch and he smiled maniacally. He literally had her in the palm of his hand.

"Talk to me, Emmy." He said. His tone changed at the drop of a hat from nervous to authoritative to sweet.

"I don't know you." She said, her voice smaller than ever. "I feel like you have so much control over me and I hate it."

He chuckled then grabbed his cigarettes and started the engine back up. "The only kind of control I want over you is _perceived_ control. Everything I want to do to you, I want to do consensually." His gaze flashed over to her briefly as he backed the car up, "And there is _a lot_ I want to do to you."

Judd drove closer to his house and stopped at the curb just a few neighbors up. "Want me to walk you to your window?" He asked. Emily said no and he accepted that answer. She pulled her bag over her head and cracked open the door before feeling Judd's hand on her thigh.

When she looked back at him, she saw a glimmer of fear lingering in his eyes.

"Are you safe in there?" He asked, expecting full honesty.

Emily gulped, "No."

Judd nodded. He didn't probe any further. "Okay. I'm coming over this weekend." He said as Emily stepped out of the car.

"I'll leave the window open."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends. I really hope that you guys are enjoying this story. I'll have some commissioned art here in a few weeks. Talk to me. <3


	6. Just Say When

A blank drop ceiling panel stared Emily in the face for over an hour. She sat on the floor of her Advanced Art classroom with one knee crooked up, a paintbrush clenched between her teeth with her pencil tapping anxiously against her thigh.

When you get only one chance to do something right, the stakes are a bit more steep, aren't they?

"You're putting too much thought into it." A girl said from across the way. She and this classmate had been sitting in front of each other all class, but they never spoke before now.

Emily glanced up, the girl even _looked_ more artistic than her — with her neon green mohawk and facial piercings. She'd caught her name a time or two, Rowan, possibly. They'd never interacted, but then again Emily hadn't interacted with much of anyone at this new school.

"Most of my pieces aren't exactly suitable for a hospital ceiling." Emily joked, though it was true. Cigarettes and nude women likely wouldn't make children with cancer feel very much at ease.

She considered a bird. The birds outside of the shatterproof windows of Claymoor had always given her a little bit of peace. It seemed much too simple, though, and she hated starting projects that would never feel fully complete.

"I'm Rowan. Your name's Emily, right? I've seen some of your sketches, they're impressive."

"Thanks." Emily said, without paying the girl much mind. "They say trauma pays off when you're an artist. Guess I should be expecting my check any day now."

Rowan laughed and it caught Emily's attention. She could see herself drawing a girl like her. The bell rang and Emily gathered her supplies, she tossed the panel back into the pile of others. She hadn't so much as made a mark on the damn thing. It would be her Art final at the end of the semester.

"You worried about the Principles of Design exam next week?" Rowan asked. She was lingering close by even though she was seemingly already packed up and ready to go.

"Oh, uhh... no, not really. Maybe the Contrast portion of it. I feel like it's more relevant for like, abstract or americana style artists, so it's kinda hard for me to relate."

The two girls started out the classroom door side by side. "My muse is photography. I spent forever practicing contrast for my final last year, I'd be down to study this weekend if you're not busy." Rowan said.

"Really?" Emily asked with mild disbelief. They trotted up the stairs, Emily leading as she made way toward her locker. "Yeah, that would be great, actually. I think I'm busy tomorrow, but I'm free Sunday."

She could see Judd leaned against her locker just ahead and it would be a lie to say that her heart didn't flutter a tiny bit.

"Yeah, let me get your number and I'll text --" Rowan had just pulled out her phone when she was abruptly interrupted by Judd's harsh scowl and overbearing tone. He smacked her phone out of her hand and it hit the ground before she even knew what was happening.

"Judd, what the fuck?!" Emily shouted.

"Yeah, Judd, what the _fuck_!" Rowan parrotted.

Judd popped the door of the locker open and took the books out of Emily's hands that he'd learned she never carried home on Friday afternoons. The sound of paperboard banging against steele caused heads to turn their way with anticipation of a fight.

"You're _not_ getting her number and you sure as shit aren't seeing her outside of school." He slammed the door and threw his arm over Emily's shoulder. "And if I catch you pulling this sneak shit again, I'll sic my fucking raccoons on you. Now fuck off, Rowan."

Judd corralled Emily down the hallway and away from her only prospective friend. He more or less dragged her down the stairwell and through the parking lot to his car, and when his legs finally slowed down, she could see that he wasn't at all as angry as he'd looked inside those suffocating walls. He pushed his hair back out of his face and reached inside his Jeep for a cigarette, sighing as if relieved to be out of Rowan's presence.

"Wanna tell me what all that was about?" Emily asked, sweetening up her tone a bit.

He leaned against the hood and inhaled deep with his eyes closed. "That bitch isn't trying to be your friend, Em. She's just trying to get under my fucking skin."

Emily climbed onto the hood and, to her surprise, Judd leaned against her ribs. He folded himself into her so adamantly that she had no choice but to open her arms and drape them around his broad shoulders. He nestled his body between her legs, snaking his long limbs around her waist as they held each other in sweet silence.

"Talk to me, Judd." She said softly with her chin resting atop his head. His forehead pressed firmer into her sternum, almost painfully so, as if he were trying to crawl under her skin and bury himself between her ribs.

"Rowan's my ex." He said, pulling himself away but not so far that his fingers weren't still laced against the small of her back. "We broke up last January and she pulls this shit every now and then — this shit where she tries to weasel her way back into my life."

"Doesn't sound like it was very mutual."

Judd scoffed, "Can't get any more mutual than the cops being called and almost arresting us both."

She ran her fingers through his hair, gently scratching the buzz of his undercut. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

It was strange to Judd how polar opposite this girl was from Rowan. Rowan was very much like himself; angry at the world, chaotic in almost every way. When they were together, the two of them were like cinder blocks on each other's feet, dragging each other to the bottom of a lake while yelling at the other to "Swim, dammit!". But they were comfortable in each other's misery.

And then here was Emily — peachy in every way. She looked like Valentine's Day personified but reminded him more of a summer afternoon. Comfortably warm with colors that ranged from fluorescent orange to pastel purple. Judd had never even looked twice at the color pink until he saw it on her hair, cheeks, and lips. Now it was becoming his favorite shade.

"No." He said while pulling her closer to the edge. "I just want you to stay away from her. The Bilzerians and Rowan, I'll quit being so bossy if you make me that last promise."

Judd felt her fingernails graze the nape of his neck and it caused a shiver to shoot down his spine. She had a mischievous look in her eye that he hadn't witnessed in the short weeks that he'd known her, though it was one he couldn't get enough of.

"I don't know... I think I kind of like when you're bossy."

She smiled down at him and Judd became painfully aware of how exposed her neck was. It would be the easiest thing in the world to taste her skin for the first time. It had become a cruel craving for him, not giving into his need to feel her on his lips.

"Yeah? That's the kind of shit you're into?" He asked with his eyebrow cocked inquisitively. "Well, in that case..."

He pulled her abruptly off the hood of his car. Emily's legs wrapped themselves instinctively around his waist like the legs of an octopus and she yelped with fright, but then laughter bubbled out of her chest. Judd held her by the ass and carried her around to the passenger side, thoroughly groping her through the seat of her jeans.

"Put me down, put me down!" She shouted through her fit of laughter, and Judd obliged. He popped the door open and planted her in the seat.

But she didn't let him go. Emily's feet unhooked from behind his back but her arms remained locked around his shoulders. Judd's hands had slid up the back of her shirt, he felt the warmth of her bare skin and the dimples at the small of her back against his fingers. Not an inch of space remained between them.

Judd's nose brushed against her collarbone. He wanted so badly to be even closer and Emily quietly begged for the same. Her breathing stopped and he could almost hear her skin screaming for stimulation, but she wasn't going to get it that easy.

"Are you ever going to kiss me?" She asked breathlessly.

Judd nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck and she thought she was going to explode from how wildly her heart was thumping. She felt his hot breath against her ear as he growled, "If I kiss you right now, I'm afraid I won't be able to stop."

Emily's heart, the same one that was threatening to break free from her rib cage, found a home in the pit of her stomach.

He let her go. They felt awfully empty without each other, even when they were still together. Judd joined her in the driver's seat and turned his hand up on the middle console for her to take. The pair didn't speak much on the drive to her house.

"Wait, you can stop here." Emily said as they nearly passed her address. "It doesn't look like anyone's home, I should be good to get out."

Judd brought the back of her hand to his lips. He looked tired today, she thought. His eyes were heavy and his skin a bit pale. Still, he looked at her with a rare intensity burning in his irises.

"You still coming over tomorrow?" Emily asked in a voice so sweet that it made Judd's teeth ache. His mind became a scattered shaky from something similar to a sugar rush.

"I told you I was." He said, "I don't break my word, Emmy."

It's funny how the same words can make someone feel completely different depending on who speaks them. Emily couldn't stand nicknames when they came out of anyone else's mouth, but when they were spoken in his gravelly voice, lord, did they make her squirm.

She collected her books and held them close to her chest as she walked up her driveway. Most days that journey was the equivalent of walking through the gates of hell -- today was no different. The loud exhaust of Judd's car disappeared down the road and when she stuck her key in the door, her stomach turned.

It was unlocked. She swallowed hard before pushing the door open.

Bruce stood in the foyer with his arms crossed. His jaw was taut and his eyes harsh as he stared her down.

"Who was that?" He asked without so much as blinking.

Emily had to have looked so small with her arms gripping the sides of her textbooks for all they were worth, her sweatshirt swallowing her up as it hung away from her hips.

"Who was who?" She said.

"Don't --" Bruce scoffed, he stepped toward her and Emily stepped to the left toward her bedroom. "Don't play dumb, kid. I will send you back to that nut house faster than you can say 'electroshock therapy'."

She bit her tongue because she knew he was right. It would only take a phone call to turn her life upside down again. Emily had vowed to herself that no matter what it took, she wouldn't be sent away again; she wouldn't be made to look like the fucked up one _again_.

"He's my classmate. I was walking home and he offered me a ride, that's all." She said with a shaky voice. Bruce took a step toward her and Emily thanked the lord when he continued his steps well past her and peaked out the blinds.

"It's a nice day out. Why would you accept a ride from a stranger on such a lovely day?"

Emily stood frozen. Her nails dug into the palm of her hand and her jaw was clenched so tight that she could taste residue from her teeth coating the inside of her mouth.

And then she saw his chest expand.

She took off down the hallway and he was close behind. It felt like miles away -- her bedroom door -- and she felt like she was in a dream. The kind where your legs just won't move fast enough and the ground keeps rolling out from beneath you, as if you're on a treadmill. Her hip bumped the wooden door frame as she threw herself inside the room, slamming the door shut behind her. Emily scrambled to turn the lock and the door shook as Bruce shoved his body against it. She dragged her desk in front of it for safe measure.

Bruce continued throwing his body against the door and Emily became thankful that this house was so new. He wouldn't be able to bust through, but he would sure as hell try. She drew the blinds. It was almost pitch black, save the small sliver of light that shined in from the corner of the windows.

She felt the solidity of her closet door against her back as she slid down it. Knees to chest. She winced every single time he violently tried to force his way inside. Emily squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears.

He didn't stop until her mother's car pulled into the driveway.

* * *

Emily didn't dream these days. She hadn't since her dad died. During the rare times that she did find sleep, it was a small solace. It was a brief moment of peace and nothingness. She was enjoying that nothingness as a light rasping against her window woke her up late Saturday night.

She sat up and slowly drew the blinds, pulling up her window so Judd could lift himself inside onto her bed.

"I thought you said you'd leave the window open?" He said with a small bit of annoyance.

Emily crossed her legs and buried her face in her hands for a moment, wiping the sleep from her eyes. "I was napping."

"With all the lights on?" Judd asked as he looked around the room. There was no ceiling light, but two lamps were flipped on at either end of her room — one in the corner near her closet and one on her nightstand. That was when he noticed that her desk was shoved in front of the door, it hadn't been that way the first time he snuck in. "You afraid the boogeyman's gonna get you?"

She scoffed. The boogeyman was the least of her worries.

"I'm gonna go brush my teeth." Emily shoved the desk away from the door and closed it behind her, leaving Judd to his own devices.

He heard water in the hall bathroom hitting a porcelain sink basin, it covered the sound of his shimmying open her top dresser drawer. Judd fingered through her underwear and resisted the urge to sneak a pair or two into his jacket pocket.

A manila folder brushed against his thumb. _That_ was what he'd been looking for.

He flipped open the cover and was greeted by a photo of a girl that was labeled _'Reynolds, Emily'_ — except this was not the girl who's eyes threatened to drown him in an unforgiving ocean of all that was blue. No, this girl's eyes were hollowed out with grief and blackened from days, if not weeks, without sleep. Her lip was split from what looked like a blow to the mouth and her cheeks were stained with tears.

_Anorexia Nervosa_

_Bipolar Disorder_

_Major Depressive Disorder_

_Patient arrived in a highly agitated state after being transported from New Bedford Memorial Hospital. Had to be sedated due to hostility toward staff that include, but are not limited to, fracturing the kneecap of a tech after being restrained. Tech has decided not to pursue legal action. Upon initial observation the patient has shown signs of anorexia nervosa as well as bipolar disorder._

Judd scanned over the pages at his own leisure. The "incident' reports slowly dwindled down as she seemed to have become more compliant. It was like reading of someone's tedious descent to rock bottom.

"Having fun?" Emily asked. She replaced the desk in front of the door.

Judd looked up from the crisp white pages and took note of how sane she looked now compared to in that photograph. He wondered if it was because of any number of the prescriptions listed in that file.

"Girls always keep the good shit in their panty drawer." He said, then replaced the papers back in the folder.

"You can keep reading." She said. "Most of the stuff in there is bullshit though."

He glanced back down at the stack of papers and counted at least three pill names that he couldn't pronounce.

"They really keep you this doped up?" Judd asked.

Emily joined him at the dresser, she didn't even need to rummage through the drawer to find what she was looking for. She pulled out two full bottles of pills and shook them, they rattled against the orange plastic containers.

"I'm not crazy, Judd." It was as if she was begging him to believe her, for _anyone_ to believe her. "I wasn't lashing out because of bipolar disorder, I was lashing out because no one would fucking listen to me."

Judd sat the papers down on top of the dresser. He pushed her hair behind her ear and held her by the back of the head. His warm, calloused thumb felt comforting against her temple.

"I'm listening." He spoke gently.

She smiled up at him. As if the open ears of another maniacal teenager meant anything at all.

"Another time." Emily said. "Take that home, reading it yourself will save me the trouble of explaining my tragic backstory to you."

She grabbed her laptop and sat cross legged on her bed. "Wanna watch a movie?" She asked.

Judd found himself nestled between the wall and her, tucked into the corner as she scrolled through the sub-genres of horror on Netflix. He tucked his arm over her shoulder and brought her against his chest, her head nuzzled under his chin.

They settled on a movie called _Eli_ , some fic about a creepy kid and the devil.

Twenty minutes in a jump scare hit the two of them, the kid standing over his parents while they slept. Emily felt the subtle thumping of Judd's heart and his chest wince against her shoulder.

"You scared?" Emily asked. She turned and snaked her hands around his waist, feeling the hem of his hoodie against her fingers. "I thought you were all big and bad?"

Judd looked down and saw the mischievous smirk on her face. He knew there was someone else hidden beneath her shell, but taking a hammer to that outer layer would only shatter her pretty exterior.

"I _am_ bad." His grip around her shoulders tightened, bringing her in closer to him. Emily didn't think such a thing was possible until she felt his chest against hers and his breath on her face. "Don't make me show you, Emmy." Judd whispered. His face turned to fit hers and she felt the brush of his nose against her own.

But he wouldn't quite close the gap. Emily's body was buzzing, she could feel the static electricity between the two of them intensifying and, like a distance echo in her own mind, she whispered so softly, "Please..."

His lips were smokey and rough and nothing like she's expected them to be. Judd kissed her gently. He felt raw adoration for this girl ooze out of his blackened heart and drip off of his bones like warm honey. It was a nice feeling, he thought, having her soft skin against his.

And then he tasted her tongue. Oh god, Judd thought he may have bitten off more than he could chew when he felt her velvety tongue against his, dancing slowly in his mouth as it was familiar with the place. Emily shifted and the next thing Judd knew her knees were on either side of him, straddling his waist as he pawed at her hips in a desperate attempt to pull her closer.

They were in heaven, those two. They stayed wrapped up in each other for longer than either of them realized, time moves slower when you're exploring new love. Emily's hands stroked his scalp and ran through his hair while Judd pressed his fingers against the small of her back. He didn't try to move things further than she allowed, but his stiffening cock still strained beneath his jeans.

The room shook as a bang on the door nearly forced the two apart, but Judd tightened his grip on Emily's waist, securing her spot on his lap.

All went silent for a moment before a low voice from the hallway said, "Em, open up."

Judd felt her blood physically run cold, he heard the pounding of her heart. She clasped her hand over his mouth and stared wide eyed at the door.

Three more boisterous bangs on followed by the voice again, louder now, "Emily, so help me God I will take the damn door _off_ if you don't open up."

"You have to go." Emily whispered frantically. Judd saw the pure terror written on her face and immediately decided that leaving wasn't an option.

She climbed off of his lap and set her feet on the ground quietly while Judd stared up at the ceiling.

"Where's your air vent?" He asked.

Another few knocks, "You have until the count of _three_ , you little shit. One—"

Emily grabbed the closest sweatshirt she could find and I'm the split second that it covered her eyes, Judd had disappeared. She scanned the room for him for only a moment before hearing a light scuffling in her closet.

"Two—"

She kicked Judd's shoes beneath her bed and threw her headphones onto the mattress. The desk seemed heavier now that it was the only thing standing in the way of her and the minuscule amount of privacy she had left.

"Three." The door flung open. Bruce let himself in, searching the room for any sign of life other than Emily's. "Where is he?!" He growled.

Emily crossed her arms over her chest and tried to hide that she was screaming inside. "Where is who?"

Bruce grabbed her by the jaw so hard that it hurt. "What did I tell you about playing dumb? You're whoring around in here, I know it."

She pulled herself free from his grip and wandered back to her bed, tucking the earbuds in as if she'd been wearing them all along. "I don't know what you're talking about, I've been watching a movie all night."

He scuffled a few sketches on her desk, effectively ruining the charcoal markings on them. She made a mental note to toss them as soon as she could. There really wasn't any place to hide in her room aside from the closet and maybe under the bed. Bruce sniffed the air.

"You been smoking in here?" He asked.

Emily looked up from her nonchalant fidgeting on her keyboard, "Would you rather me go outside in the middle of the night?"

He ignored her obvious attitude and wandered to the closet, opening it lazily as if he didn't actually expect anyone to be there. Emily's breath hitched in her throat for a moment as she felt her whole life teeter on the edge of ending completely.

Judd wasn't there. The only thing in the small closet was a rack of clothes, a few pairs of shoes piled up on the floor, and a stack of blank canvases.

She sighed with relief when he shut the door back.

"You're losing it, Bruce. I know of a lovely facility back in Mass." Emily said, then grinned cheekily. "Though I'm not sure if there's a pill for all the issues you have."

Judd couldn't see much from his place in the ceiling. He'd crawled up there through a small air shaft at the top of the closet and did his best to watch over her from the vent above her bed. His fingers grew twitchy when he saw Bruce grab her face, and he fiddled with his knife in his pocket as he imagined all the terrible things he'd like to do to that man.

Bruce's hand closed into a fist and Judd _dared_ him in his mind to react.

He backed off toward the hallway.

"Leave the desk where it is or it's gone." He said through clenched teeth.

"I can work just as well on the floor, but fine." Emily replied.

He shut the door behind him and after his heavy footsteps trailed away, she raced to the door and turned the lock. Her back hit the wood and she could hear her heartbeat drum against her ears.

Judd lowered himself out of the air shaft and the way he stomped toward her, she didn't expect his touch to be so soft. He grabbed her face with both hands and tilted her chin up to face him.

"Are you okay?" Judd asked, frantic. "Did he hurt you?"

Emily was like a child, okay until you actually _ask_ if they're okay. She felt hot tears sting the corners of her eyes as they threatened to spill onto her cheeks. Judd watched as her chin began to quiver.

"Does he do that a lot?" He asked quietly. The dam broke and soon Emily's face became wet with tears. Judd's thumbs worked diligently to wipe them away as he ushered her back to the bed. He climbed under the blanket with her and held her close to his chest, shushing her gently with his arms wrapped around her.

"Y-you can't stay." Emily muttered through her tears. "If he catches you they'll send me back. I'm not fucking going back there _ever_!"

"If I leave, I'm taking you with me." Judd said. He pulled the comforter over their heads and settled into the darkness surrounding them, feeling her heartbeat and breathing begin to stabilize.

Judd knew she hadn't fallen asleep yet. He could feel the steady stroking of her nimble artist fingers against his chest. She would work those fingers to the bone, he thought to himself. She'd use them for any ounce of relief they allowed for years to come and probably develop arthritis by the time she was forty.

"Want me to kill him?" He asked.

Emily laughed briefly into the warmth of his hoodie. "Yeah, but not tonight."

He kissed the top of her head, smoothing back her hair with his palm. "Just say when, babe."

He stayed until she fell asleep, until the early morning dew settled into the grass and the sun hadn't quite risen over the horizon yet. Then, he snuck out her window and down the block to his car where he smoked a cigarette and contemplated how fucked up this girl might just be.

Judd drove to the outskirts of Bridgeton and parked on the side of the road. He flipped open that Manila folder and began reading Emily's life story.

In the end, he was left both horrified and terribly, disgustingly in love.


	7. Ten Commandments

Emily felt the warm embrace of long, lanky arms wrapping around the front of her shoulders as she shut her locker between classes.

"Holy _fuck_ , I missed you during Spanish." Judd said as he rested his chin on top of her head.

She'd never been one for PDA and these hallways were bursting at the seams with her peers, but she didn't know them. Not one other student had tried to befriend her in the month she'd been at Bridgeton, and why would they? Emily hadn't extended a friendly hand toward any of them either. October was bringing in crisp air and earlier sunsets and soon these lockers would only be a memory that haunted every one of them as they made their ways off to colleges and apprenticeships and prisons.

But Emily enjoyed Judd. She'd half expected him to avoid her like the plague after reading her file from Claymoore, instead it seemed that he was clinging onto her. That left three possibilities — He read the file and felt sorry for her, he read the file and was crazy enough to stick around, or he didn't read the file at all.

She hoped it was the second option. Though she didn't consider _herself_ crazy, she'd gotten along with those that truly were fairly well during her stay at the nut house.

Emily turned in his grip, "Say something to me in Spanish." She said.

"Trade?" Judd asked, "Recite me a poem and I'll say fucking anything you want in Spanish."

She scourged her mind of the endless poems she had tucked away for a rainy day.

_A rainy day._

Emily leaned back against her locker, textbooks and sketch pad tucked against her chest, " _I feel closest to the angels when I'm in the middle of a thunderstorm, soaked to the skin, shook up with sound. Waiting for my bones to become branches of white light."_

Judd had been enamored by the way she spoke since the moment they met — not a hitch in her voice, no roughness even when her throat was seared from piping hot smoke. So soft and sweet and silky smooth. He supposed that was part of being a reader, or an artist, or just a girl with a spell cast over him.

"Quiero comerte viva." He said, with no trace of an accent. Emily asked what that meant and he smiled, a devil's smile, then snaked his fingers through her belt loops and pulled her closer to him. "Skip third block with me and I'll show you."

Judd kissed her right there in front of everyone, she stood on her tippy-toes just to reach his lips. For a moment, no one else existed.

That was ruined when Judd's hand slapped the locker above her head to stop himself from falling into her. He'd been patted a little too hard on the back by a beast of a guy that Emily only recognized from passing in the halls.

"Sorry to interrupt the foreplay." The thinner guy beside him said, the smirk on his face and the casual cut of his eyes said that he wasn't really sorry. "Judd here has failed to introduce us. I'm Val, this is Kurt."

She smiled at the two as she tucked herself under Judd's protective arm. "Emily. You're in my next class, right?"

Val and Emily had British Literature together, though Val rarely showed up for it. The only classes that he bothered to show up for were Anatomy because he enjoyed playing with dead things, and Music Comp because he enjoyed playing with loud things.

He nodded and turned his attention back to Judd. "Fight Night at our place later. Dad's staying at the condo with his whore and Mom's gonna be fucking Coach Steve for awhile. You coming?"

Judd cut his eyes at the two, "It's not Friday, dingus"

"That's true." Val said. "But there's a party we have to grab a few tits at this Friday night, so we rescheduled."

The first bell rang and students began dispersing all around them. Emily didn't plan on cutting class with Judd. Not today, probably not ever. She watched as Val backed away from them, his eyes never leaving her as he spoke.

"Ten o'clock. Bring your lady if you want."

She lifted herself up to kiss Judd goodbye and could taste the irritability on his lips, the way they pressed into a harsh line.

* * *

British Lit was a drag. Emily always found herself falling asleep during it. Today was no different, she'd mastered napping with her head propped up on her hand. It was the sound of rustling paper, and not the usual mass notebook folding of everyone around her, that caused her eyes to snap awake.

An origami note sat in the middle of her workbook — nothing fancy, no swan or lotus flower — just a little triangle that she often saw fly across the room. Emily looked back and forth nonchalantly, trying to figure out who could've been the messenger. In the normally empty seat next to her sat Val, she need not look further.

_Fight Night later at my place, you down?_

It read in small, scribbled handwriting. Usually that would be called "doctor's handwriting", but if she had to guess, this guy was definitely not on track to go to school for another ten years.

Emily looked back at Val and shook her head. Even if Judd hadn't made her promise to stay away from the Bilzerians, a whole night of fighting didn't sound like her cup of tea. She could get that from the comfort of her own home, if that were the case.

"No? Booze and bud is on the house for chicks." He whispered. "Let me guess, Juddy _told_ you that you couldn't come. He's your keeper now, huh? Didn't even give the rest of us a fair shot."

She was beginning to like it better when Val skipped this class. The way his eyes strayed across her body was unsettling, as if he was trying to look right through her oversized shirt to see what she was really about.

"You thought you had a chance to begin with —" She scoffed, her smile meant to demean him. "That's cute."

Emily folded the paper into an adorable little frog and on it's head, in big, bold letters, wrote the word _NO_. It hopped its way back over to Val's desk and he crumpled it in his fist.

He excused himself to go to the restroom and didn't return.

* * *

Judd damn near begged Emily to let him drive her home from school that afternoon. He even corralled her halfway across the parking lot before she finally stood her ground and planted her feet firmly on the concrete.

It was kind of adorable when she thought she was in control.

Nonetheless, Judd was left high and dry with plenty of time on his hands before heading over to the Bilzerian home. So like any overly hormonal and under stimulated teenage boy, he jerked off.

He got in the shower and leaned back against the wall, remembering how new Emily's face looked to him when she was perched just a few inches above where he stood. It wasn't like that now — now, he could describe every freckle that bridged her nose in great detail. There weren't enough words in the human language to express the depth of blue her eyes were but, good god, he could go on for hours. And, though she kept herself covered at school, Judd had beared witness to the outer confines of her body. He'd been graced with watching her thighs jiggle in shorts and touched the tender skin beneath her shirt.

They say that guys can get off to anything, and it's true. Judd stroked his cock, imagining his squeezing hand as the muscles in her throat and the warm water dripping down his balls as her saliva. He wondered if she was messy, how she'd look with tears in her eyes as she strained to take him to the hilt.

Was she really a virgin? Judd didn't think so. Still, he fantasized about taking that piece of her. He could almost hear her sweet voice moaning his name as he pictured her on all fours in front of him. _That_ was what sent cum spilling onto his fingers — the thought of her looking back at him over her shoulder while taking his cock from behind.

Most people would feel bad post-orgasm for thinking of someone in such a demeaning way, not Judd. He'd been upfront with her in his intentions to fuck her, and that was still what he wanted. 

But there was something else growing inside of him too — something both tender and protective. Judd wanted to make her cum violently and then coddle her through the aftershock. He wanted to listen to her recite poetry for hours on end, or maybe watch her fingers become blackened with charcoal as she worked herself into a trance while drawing. He wanted to murder every last person that has ever been the reason for her tears, and then put their bodies on display as if to say _"Look what I did for you. They can't hurt you anymore."_.

Judd knew that those feelings weren't normal, at least not for him. So he pushed them to the back of his mind and hoped to forget about them.

He toweled off and took a nap while waiting for his night to begin.

~

Emily didn't go straight home after leaving school property. She hadn't explored Bridgeton pretty much at all since moving there, the only parts of it she really knew were her house, the high school, Judd's car and the Cat Cafe. She wandered around downtown and took in the quaint little shops that were setting out their fall decorations.

Downtown here wasn't at all like it was where she was from. There were no pay-to-park lots or scummy bars, no stray dogs running amok. It was just where the town came to a center, there was a roundabout and then the streets branches off into a grid system.

She settled into a cute little coffee shop and sat on the patio. The early autumn breeze was nice, now she could wear those oversized crewnecks and not earn questioning glances from everyone around her. Emily ordered a cappuccino and a salad and sketched strangers as they ate around her. She wrote them mysterious backstories that were likely as far from the truth as possible, but it kept her entertained for close to three hours.

After that, she opened up Christopher Poindexter's poems and highlighted whatever brief lines stirred something in her.

_"I am the beginning and end of a story that will never be lived again."_

_"All I'm trying to say is, I will love you through the darkness."  
_

_"You must understand that your pain, is essential."_

Emily forgot to take her medication. A lot. The second line she highlighted reminded her of that, so she fished the bright orange bottle out of her bag and popped two or three of them to make up for lost time. Then she made a mental note to set a daily alarm reminder.

She'd forget to set that alarm, but at least she was feeling good today.

It was nearly seven o'clock when she finally strayed through the front door of her house. Emily could hear her mother making a mess in the kitchen, she smelled the aroma of canned pasta sauce and garlic bread. It wasn't much, but it was her specialty.

"Toss me a nood, mom." She said as she walked through the open floor plan, and on command her mother tossed one across the room. Emily caught the al dente pasta in her mouth and for a moment it felt like old times, before her dad had passed away. She sucked it up between her lips. "Not done yet."

Her mother smiled and let the noodles continue to simmer while she ground the beef.

"Dinner will be done soon." She said, diverting her gaze down into the skillet. "Bruce and I are hoping to have a little bit of alone time later tonight. Maybe you could go hang out with some of your classmates for a while."

Emily hopped up onto the counter and dipped her finger in the red meat sauce. It wasn't quite bubbling yet, and boy did Hunts _almost_ taste like the real thing.

"You can just say that you guys want to fuck, mom." Her mother winced at the use of such language. "Oh, lighten up, you prude. I'm almost eighteen, you don't have to sugarcoat everything."

Sugar, that reminded her. Her mother pulled down the jar of sugar from the cabinet and sprinkled a small amount on top of the sauce. _It cuts the acidity_ , she'd always said. Emily could never tell the difference either way.

"Almost eighteen. I can hardly believe eighteen years ago, your dad and I were finding out about you." She looked up from the stove at her daughter, the girl that resembled her late husband so strongly. "We _prayed_ for you, Emmy. Michael was so excited when I told him he was finally going to be a daddy."

It felt as though a dull knife was being forced into Emily's heart. She didn't like talking to her mom about her dad. When Bruce came along just shy of a year after his death, it almost felt like a betrayal to half of her existence. The fact that he was a conniving creep didn't help either.

"I know that you miss him. I do, too. Maybe I could write you a sick note one day and we could take a drive back home to Mass, visit him for a few hours."

Emily landed on her feet back on the ground, she pulled three dishes out of the cabinet and began setting the table. "Skipping school?? Now, that does not sound like the Olivia Burkhart I know. _My_ mom would drag me back to Bridgeton High by the teeth if she found out I was missing out on a riveting day of lectures and note taking."

The two of them heard the garage door open and close on its motorized track and any fun being had was over. Bruce walked through the door, his top two buttons already undone and his tie loosened. Emily was glad she was still covered up.

He looked absolutely surprised to see her. "Oh, you're not, uh..." His eyes flashed over to his wife. "I thought we discussed —"

"Go change. Mom and I will set out dinner and _then_ we can talk about my terms of this agreement." Emily smiled, she had the upper hand at this bargaining table.

It wasn't long before they had all thoroughly stuffed their faces with spaghetti and garlic bread and enough carbs to make up for all the steamed vegetables and baked chicken Emily's mother usually cooked. She tossed her napkin down on her plate and intertwined her fingers on top of the table.

"I want freedom." Emily said, staring Bruce directly in the eye. "And not this false sense of freedom you guys give me by letting me manage my own pills. I want to go out on my own terms, not just when you guys want to fuck in the living room."

She was met with an exasperated "Hey!" and "Emily!" from the both of them.

Emily rolled her eyes. "Two nights. Two nights a week where I can go be a teenager, that's all I'm asking."

Olivia looked over at her husband who was obviously not on board with the stipulations. Bruce had never been one to flat out parent Emily in place of her mother, no, he knew his limits. He preferred to weasel his way into Olivia's mind when they were alone, planting seeds of doubt in her mind when Emily wasn't around to talk some sense into her. Now that he was on the spot, this decision wasn't his.

"Your counselor _did_ say that it's best you make friends after the move." Olivia chewed on her bottom lip. After a few brief moments of painful silence, her mother sighed, "Fine."

Emily hopped out of her seat and hugged her mother around the shoulders, kissing her rapidly on the top of the head. "Thank yoouuuu, thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"But no drugs!" Her mother said, though she smiled through the words.

"Got it, no hard drugs." Emily kissed her mother once more on the head and had to hold in her excitement to stop from skipping away. "Give me an hour to shower and get ready and then I will be out of your hair, promise."

She didn't bother to look at Bruce before leaving for her bathroom, she could feel his eyes burning a hole in her. That sensation made her grin, it made her feel like her mother had chosen _her_ for once.

Emily took a full shower, the type girls only take when they think things might get hot and heavy. She let a keratin masque sit on her hair while she shaved, brushed her teeth as the conditioner washed over her body, softening her skin. When she was done she lotioned her legs and blow dried her hair.

She propped up her phone and dialed Judd's number, resuming doing her makeup in the mirror as she waited for him to answer.

Judd woke up to his phone blaring beside him.

_Incoming Facetime Call from Em...._

He flipped on the bedside lamp and propped himself up on his elbow, her full body filled his screen. Judd perked up immediately at the sight of her sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, a very oversized t-shirt pooled around her waist with no shorts that he could tell below it.

"I'm free." She said with a wide smile.

Judd rubbed the sleep from his face and sat up against the wall. "Are you wearing pants?" He asked.

Emily rolled her eyes. "Did you hear me? I'm fucking _free_ , Judd. Two nights a week, I don't have to worry about someone breathing down my fucking neck."

"I heard you." Judd said. "I planned on seeing you regardless, their permission means nothing to me."

She cut her eyes through the camera and it made Judd smile. After a moment Emily went back to applying her eyeliner (sharp as a knife, he noted).

"Be excited for me, dude. I can go with you to the Bilzerian's tonight — if you want, I mean."

"I'm excited about those fuckin' panties. Black?" Emily squeezed her legs tighter together and blushed, she'd been unknowingly giving him a free show. "My favorite color, how thoughtful."

Emily finished applying her makeup and pulled half of her hair up into a messy top knot, meanwhile Judd got in a few rounds of what sounded like an awfully violent video game. When nine o'clock rolled around she grabbed the phone and finally stood up, taking it with her to her closet.

"What should I wear?" She asked, flipping the camera around so that he could see her clothes.

"I get to choose?" Judd said in response.

"No. I'm asking for your opinion." She pushed back the hangers one by one and to her surprise, Judd actually seemed to be contemplating the decision.

"What the hell is _that_?" He asked as she pushed back a white spaghetti strap bodysuit.

"A tank top, pretty much. You wear it so you don't have to tuck in your shirt." Emily pulled it out and laid her phone down while she slipped the bodysuit on. After that she fished through her dresser for a pair of black shorts, tying it all together with a black and grey flannel button up.

She showed off the outfit to Judd in the mirror, allowing the button up to hang off one of her shoulders.

Judd noticed how, slowly, she was revealing more and more of herself to him. Not just physically, but personality wise. She wasn't the calm, shy girl that everyone at school took her for. She was actually quite confident in herself.

Though he _definitely_ noticed the clothes that Emily had begun steadily shedding in his presence, too, and Judd wasn't going to complain about that one bit.

"You look good." He said, his voice tender. "You always look good, Em."

Emily flipped their camera around and he caught the tail end of her biting her lip. "Come get me? We don't have to go to Kurt and Val's, I don't care what we do."

Judd was already in the process of searching for his car keys. "I'm out of weed so we have to at least make an appearance." He pushed his way out the door and locked his bedroom behind him. "That's fine. I wanna show you off anyways."

* * *

Emily caught wind of her parents getting comfy on the couch together before she slipped seamlessly out the front door. The early October night was cool, a breeze blew through the street lamps. It was almost eerily silent in her picture perfect neighborhood.

A loud muffler put an end to that. Judd's Jeep came roaring around the block behind Emily and she continued walking as he idled slowly beside her.

Judd whistled out the window, his arm draped coolly over the steering wheel. "How much, baby?" He grinned and his pearlescent teeth shined in the moonlight. Emily had always been a sucker for a pretty smile.

She leaned against the door. "For you? Free."

He unlocked the door and she slid into the passenger seat. Judd leaned his head back over the center console, waiting for her lips to meet his.

"You think you get free love whenever you want now?"

Judd grabbed her by the back of the neck and took the kiss that he so desperately craved, pulling her face to his and answering her question without words. His hand was rough in Emily's hair, but his lips so gentle.

When he pulled away, Emily was left feeling dumbfounded and a little dizzy. "Hopefully that answers your question." Judd said. He opened his palm up to hers and she took it happily.

The pair listened to music while they rode across town. Emily had her feet up on the dashboard and Judd let her take the aux cord. She put on some pop type band that he didn't particularly care for, but enjoyed watching her enjoy herself. Her feet danced subtly on the dash and Judd paid more attention to that than he did the road for most of the drive.

He kissed her during red lights and left his hand resting protectively on her thigh, squeezing it gently to warn her of potholes or sharp turns.

Little niceties that made Emily feel loved.

They parked in front of an expansive, albeit unkempt looking house, and Judd turned in his seat to face her. It reminded Emily of how her mother used to turn around to look at her in the backseat before they went into Sunday morning church service. _No screaming, no cursing, no pulling out your sketchpad_. Those were the three words that Olivia used to recite to her daughter every weekend. They were engraved in Emily's mind as more sacred than the Ten Commandments.

"Stay with me, okay?" He said.

Emily waited for him to continue, but nothing came. "Is that -- is that it?" she asked, "That's all? You're not gonna give me a whole list of rules that I need to follow?"

"You're grown, Em. You don't need me telling you what to do." Judd reached into the backseat for his hoodie and began rummaging through the center console. Emily watched as his face tilted up slightly, eyebrow cocked, and said, "You _want_ me telling you what to do?"

She leaned over the console and kissed him again, her lips tasted like sugar against Judd's tongue. As she tried to pull away she again felt his hand on her neck -- no, her _throat_. Judd's rough, calloused fingers wrapped gently around the front of her throat and he kissed her again, hard, stealing all the breath from her lungs as he ate up her brief, muffled moan.

Judd smiled as they parted, she was flushed from head to toe. "We aren't spending much time here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are enjoying this story because I'm having a lot of fun writing it. (:  
> If you're a Wattpad user, this story is also posted there.


	8. Anorexia Nervosa

Judd led Emily by the hand down the steep, dark stairwell to the Bilzerian basement. On the ground floor, this house looked barren. It was a shame, Emily thought, to have a house so big with so little love inside it. But when they got to the bottom of the steps, she learned that she'd been deceived.

There were more than a few people there, that was for sure. Liqueur bottles and beer cans were strung about, the heavy scent of skunk filled the air and a dozen of her classmates were either gathered around a mattress-turned-wrestling-rink watching an all out brawl or mingling amongst themselves. It wasn't exactly cozy beneath the house, that was for sure. It was dimly lit and musty and what sparse furniture existed for lounging looked to be decades old.

Emily had gotten spoiled after being in a sparkly clean private facility for a quarter of the year.

Val approached the pair with two beers in hand, he extended them out like a peace offering. "Glad to see you two could make it. Stick around, we're boxing our little brother for some old porno later."

Judd declined the beer but Emily snatched the other one up. She didn't like being around this many people outside of a controlled setting, it made her anxiety flare up. She popped the tab and took a hefty swig, allowing it to quench her dry tongue.

"We're just here to buy." Judd said, keeping his body stationed firmly between Emily and Val.

Val lost all interest in Emily when that cha-ching sound rang in his ears. "Follow me upstairs." Judd took her hand again and was stopped when Val paused on his heel. "We both know she doesn't wanna see my room, Judd. Just leave her here, she isn't gonna get kidnapped."

The suggestion didn't sit well with Judd, but Val was right. His walls were covered with _Playboy_ posters and there were constantly pairs of panties sitting on the ground. Aside from that, when there were sheets on his bed, that were ones that hadn't been washed for weeks — covered in stains and stronger in scent than the weed he was selling.

"Maggs!' Judd yelled across the room, he waved some girl over that Emily had never seen before.

The girl was absolutely pleasant looking. She was taller than Emily but especially thin with ginger colored hair, the natural kind. Clusters of freckles covered her skin and as she got closer, the friendly smile on her face was awfully infectious.

"Maggie, this is Emily." He said, motioning between the two. "Keep her company until I get back."

Emily wasn't given an option. Judd kissed her on the head and followed Val back up the stairs to civilization.

The girl that she now knew as Maggie pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket, Camel Methols. "You want one?" she asked, to which Emily declined and pulled out one of her own. They shared a flame from a lighter.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Judd hasn't been able to shut the fuck up about you for the past month."

Between the rush of nicotine through her veins and that statement alone, Emily felt light on her feet. She felt her heart flutter like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. People didn't "talk" about her, at least not in the way that Maggie was hinting.

They called her crazy. They called her a liar. They called her unstable.

"What does he say?" Emily asked.

~

The trek to Val's room was one that Judd had taken plenty of times. Usually it was a short walk straight up the stairwell to the second floor, followed by an extended smoke sesh so that he could get a high in for free. Now it just felt tedious. Every step he took, Judd knew that it was putting more distance between him and Emily.

"You want your usual?" Val asked as he pushed open his bedroom door.

"Give me an extra ounce for Em." Judd replied.

Val pulled out a gallon mason jar from his closet along with his scale and other dealing supplies. He unscrewed the top and began pulling out hefty green nuggets with a pair of tongs.

The air between the two had thickened in the past few weeks, Judd could've pulled out his pocket knife and cut a hole through the tension. He'd caught Val looking at Emily too many times to consider the guy a friend, not that he particularly ever did in the first place.

Val wasn't the type of guy to have "friends". He had acquaintances, people he liked to get fucked up with or were beneficial to his being. But Judd knew that that was the extent of their relationship, and in some ways, Judd was the same. He didn't play well with others. The small group of friends he had, he'd known since childhood and could trust them with his life.

Val wasn't in that group of people, he just lingered around them.

"That's a nice piece of ass you've got following you around." He said as he sealed up the first Ziplock bag. "It's nice to see her showing a little more skin."

"Shut the fuck up, V." Judd growled, like a canine warning you to think twice before treading onto their property.

Val's eyes snapped up while he kept his head down. "Has she let you fuck her yet? Those fuckin' virgins always hold out forever."

Judd smacked the glass jar to the ground and it was sturdy enough that it didn't shatter, but it still sent precious greenery spilling all over the disgusting bedroom floor.

"Dude, what the fuck?!" Val shouted. He tried to follow after the jar but was met chest-to-chest by Judd, who stood at least two inches taller than him.

"I told you to shut the _fuck up_ , Val." He spat. If Judd had possessed the venom of a cobra, it would've been pumping into Val's heart by now.

"Oh, what? You catchin' feelings for the broad already?" Val smiled as he spoke. "You always used to talk about the shit you and Rowan did."

"Yeah, well, Rowan was a whore. Emily isn't like that, and she's fucking mine, so lay off."

The two backed away from each other and Val weighed out the bags. Judd pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and began flipping through bills. He offered the cash over but Val kept the bags lingering just out of his reach.

"How about a trade." Val said with a sly look on his face. "I'll let you pump a load into Maggs _and_ you can consider this purchase on the house. She's a pro at sucking cock, I've taught her pretty well. All you have to do is let me break Em's pussy in for you."

Without a second thought about it Judd's fist met Val's face. He felt his knuckles crack, or maybe that was just the sensation of Val's nose crunching under the pressure of his anger. Blood covered his hand and soon the other boy was on the floor, holding his face and cursing to the heavens.

Judd leaned over Val's crumpled body. "How about _fuck you_. And in order to make things cool between us, this purchase is gonna be on the house anyways." He collected the two bags and shoved them under his hoodie, then fished his knife out of his pocket. "If I hear about you even _whispering_ Emily's name again, I'll slit your fucking throat."

With that, he left him there, bleeding from the nose on his own bedroom floor.

~

Emily's eyes darted to the top of the stairs as loud, quick footsteps stomped down them. She and Maggie had been getting along swimmingly, and it wasn't just because of the roach they'd shared.

She noticed the way Judd's jaw was stiff, how his hands were clenched into fists. And the _blood_ , oh god.

"We're leaving." Judd said as he grabbed her by the hand. He turned his attention to the redhead in front of them. "I broke your boyfriend's nose. You deserve better, Maggs."

Maggie almost laughed as she took another swig of her beer. "You're not telling me anything I don't know. He probably deserved it, but I'll go check on him."

Emily's arm was nearly pulled out of socket as Judd tugged her up the stairwell and out to his car. Still, he opened the door for her and made sure she was buckled up, even though he wasn't, before flooring the gas peddle.

She watched the speedometer shimmy all the way up to 90 miles an hour before finally saying something. "Dude, slow down! Are you trying to kill us?!" She shouted over the roar of the engine.

Judd eased his foot off the gas but didn't speak. His jaw was taut, fingers tight around the steering wheel. He swerved into a long road that led out of town and after ten minutes or so of driving, Emily could see tire tracks leading into a short dip in the woods.

He went here a lot to clear his mind. There was no sentimental value to this pull off and only a small amount of privacy, the only reason he chose it was because cops didn't patrol it often.

"I need to smoke." Judd said, short and snippy. Emily watched as he popped a nug into his grinder and then poured the dust into a bowl he kept in his glove box.

He breathed in deep and she could almost witness the murder melt off of his limbs. Finally, he loosened up.

"What happened?" Emily asked quietly. Again, like she was in church and any misstep would get her punished.

"Val's just a fuckin' piece of shit. I warned him to stop talking about you and he chose not to listen."

She took the bowl from him. The blood on Judd's hand was dried now, crusting around his fingernails. "That explains the abnormal amount of blood on you."

He looked down at his fingers and grimaced, then fished around in the back seat until he found a half full water bottle. 

"Here —" Emily began sliding out of her plaid button up. The water alone would do nothing to get rid of all that red, and it was beginning to make her queasy. "Use this."

After sticking his hand out the window and rinsing off, Judd finally felt clean again. He could see the presence of smoke lingering in the air and shut off the headlights, leaving the two of them illuminated only by the neon blue of the dashboard.

When he turned back to grab the bowl, oh god, Judd couldn't have been angry anymore if he tried. Emily was leaned back in his passenger seat with one foot resting on the dash. He could see the smooth insides of her thighs and the blue lights gave him a sneak peek as to what they'd look like bruised by his teeth. Her tank top that he'd picked out dipped low on her chest, giving him a lovely view of her neck, collar bones and breasts. And when she looked up at him he could see that she was in a good place.

"Thanks for standing up for me." Emily said. "It's actually been, like... a really long time since I've had someone do that."

Judd took a few more hits and then tucked the bowl away in the center console, in there was also her Claymoore Psychiatric Facility file. He pulled it out and tossed it gently onto the dashboard so that this wouldn't seem so much like a confrontation.

Emily usually laughed when she saw that file hiding in her underwear drawer. It was comical to her how completely wrong an entire group of trained professionals had gotten her.

"I'll always stand up for you. But I need you to tell me the truth, Em." Judd said. "You were right, even I could tell that file was full of a bunch of bullshit. I told you I'd listen... so I'm listening."

She smirked, casting her eyes down. Where to begin? After a moment, Emily spoke, and her face lit up as if she'd been waiting her whole life for someone to give a damn.

"They said I have post traumatic stress disorder from losing my dad." She scoffed. "That's just a clinical term for _'this bitch has daddy issues'_. And I do, but that doesn't mean I'd lie about Bruce trying to force himself on me."

Judd's breath hitched in his throat. He'd gotten that vibe, but it wasn't something he hoped would be true. Emily grabbed the file and fingered through it.

" _Anorexia Nervosa._ " She looked up, "The only issue I have with my body is the fact that old men seem to be so interested in it."

Emily read aloud from the neatly written notes, " _Patient refuses to admit that she is addicted to prescription medication. Adderall_. — I wasn't addicted to anything. I was scared of who was going to come into my room while I was sleeping. The pills helped me stay awake and they made food look like slop. That's all."

She closed the file and Judd reached for it. He didn't open it back up, the details were seared into his mind where they would forever remain. "And the suicide attempt?"

_Patient attempted suicide via a handful of Adderall and Tylenol. Was transported to Bedford Memorial Hospital where her stomach was pumped and she was subsequently brought to Claymoore at her parent's request._

Sadness glimmered like a tear in Emily's eyes, though Judd knew she'd shed far too many to allow more spill tonight. It existed behind closed doors, along with the disappointment and rage that she'd learned to bottle up.

"I tried to tell my mom and she didn't believe me. There was no conversation, no questions. She just kind of... shut me down." She turned in her seat to face Judd and crossed her legs in her lap. "I didn't try to kill myself because I wanted to die, Judd. I wanted to stop living my life in fucking fear and the one person that could change that told me I was full of shit. Dying was just a better option."

Judd lay his hand out for her to take and she placed her palm delicately in his. He brought her fingers to his lips and then pressed them against his face. There, he could almost feel her steady heartbeat thumping in time with his. She was alive. What were the odds? They were alive simultaneously and they'd managed to exist until this moment.

"My offer of murder still stands — for either of your parents." Judd could see her eyeing his lips through the fluorescent light. A small smile spread across her face.

"Don't think I haven't considered it."

He pulled her hand further, tugging her arm across the console. "Come here, baby..." he whispered. 

Judd Birch could've been asking her to walk through the gates of hell with him, she would've done it. She would've followed him to the ends of the Earth. But at that moment, he was only asking for her to cross the few feet separating them. What a small request.

So she did.

He helped Emily onto his lap where he held her like his bride. He kissed her as such, too. Judd's lips met hers tenderly as she pressed her body against his and when his tongue slid against hers, oh, it took everything in Emily's power not to moan.

They kissed slowly, delicately, as their hands explored each other's details — Emily's hips, spine and soft hair — Judd's undercut and the nape of his neck.

But Judd wanted more. His cock was beginning to harden from having her ass perched so nicely against it and her nails stroking the nape of his neck made the hair on his arms stand up.

"About those daddy issues..." He said between breaths as his hand slid over her thigh.

Emily did something then that Judd would have never expected. She spread her legs for him — slightly, ever so slightly, as if to say, _"I'm listening"_.

"What other deviances are you hiding, Em?" Judd asked. She bit her lip out of nervousness. "I know you've got them. What is it, praise?"

He felt her thighs open barely an inch further as she nodded her forehead against his.

"That's it? You want me to tell you how good you are, baby?"

Judd's hand slid up her inner thigh, brushing past the frayed hem of her shorts. He could feel the heat radiating off of her core. When his fingers pressed against the center of her thighs Emily kissed him with more fervor than before, her hands grasping his hair gently as she spread her legs further. Judd could feel her moisture dampening the denim, but the shorts were so constricting.

He dragged his hand across her stomach, clawing at her like a hungry animal. His fingers unbuttoned her shorts so easily and worked the zipper down just as fast, then lingered just inside the hem.

Judd felt her squirm against his cock. "Is this what you want?" He asked, and a soft moan slipped past her lips.

He slid his hand over her mound, resting it against her warmth, pressing his fingers down so gently. There he could feel how wet she was, and she knew that what they were doing now would never be enough for him. His thumb stroked her clit through the thin, damp fabric of her underwear.

"Holy shit..." She said in one sigh. Even when she was cursing, she sounded so sweet. So innocent.

Judd pulled the material to the side and stroked the outside of her pussy, dragging his fingers through her juices and over her clit again. He dipped just between her lips. "So fucking wet for me..." he moaned into her mouth.

Emily kissed him again and leaned into his chest, giving herself up to him completely.

Judd took her. He worked his middle and ring fingers into her slowly, pushing in just a bit and then pulling back out, driving her absolutely fucking mad. He stroked the inner walls of her cunt as they kissed, swallowing her sweet moans whole.

In one swift move, his fingers bottomed out inside her. They filled her up as the heel of his palm pressed against her clit. Finally, a real moan escaped her throat. It sounded like angels crying.

Judd turned in the confines of his seat and took her with him, forcing her to shift on his fingers and producing more moans. He pulled her legs over his so she was sitting with her back to his chest and before she could ask what he was doing, his fingers pulled out and plunged inside of her again. He kissed her neck, grazing his teeth against her skin while holding back the desire to let them sink in, and then got to work.

Judd fingered her maddeningly slow, pressing his fingers up against the walls of her cunt. His car became absolutely filled with her sighs and moans as she felt him fill her up. Emily sunk back against him, reaching up to hold his head against her throat and gently grinding her ass against his hard cock.

He gripped her waist with his free arm, holding her still as his fingers worked her cunt. "You're gonna make me cum in my fucking pants, baby." He growled.

Judd curled his fingers inside her, reaching for the spot that he knew would bring her to her knees. When he found it, he'd never heard sounds more beautiful. Emily's lips parted and her face contorted in pure pleasure. She moaned loudly and babbled incoherently, mostly the words, "Right there, right there, fuck!"

He kissed up to her ear, "So fucking good. You're such a good girl. You like when I play with your pussy?"

Emily nodded wildly as a long string of yesses flowed from her lips. Even with the restraint of his arm around her waist, she found a way to grind herself against him. The friction of their clothes rubbed Judd's cock nicely and he growled into her ear, sending a chill down her spine. Emily was in heaven, absolute heaven. She felt at home with Judd wrapped around her, and the fact that they were in the front seat of his car on the side of the road made her feel exposed. It was erotic and hot.

Judd looked over her shoulder and down her body and became enamored. The blue lights of the dashboard lit up her white tank top, giving him the perfect view of her breasts. Further down he could see just inside her shorts, the wispy, blonde hairs that peeked out from her pushed aside panties. He watched his own fingers working her over, glistening with juices as he pressed his cock up against her ass.

He let go of her waist and grabbed her by the chin, turning her head to the side so she'd face him. "You better cum for me, Em." Judd growled.

Her eyes were glazed with lust and her skin was tinted as pink as her hair. Judd curled his fingers again and massaged her g-spot, stroking her cunt gently until she couldn't take it anymore.

Emily grabbed his wrist, "I'm cumming, I'm cumming, daddy..." she cooed.

"Holy fucking shit." Judd kissed her hard, swallowing her moans as she came on his fingers. "Fucking perfect," He whispered to her as wave after wave crashed over her body, "you're fucking perfect, baby. So good."

After a few moments Judd felt the tension in her legs relax. She laid against him with her head resting against his chest. She seemed so malleable now, like a soft kitten. Judd buttoned and zipped her shorts for her and wiped his hand on the now ruined button up he'd used earlier.

"Give me a second and I'll return the favor." Emily said. He could tell that the climax had taken a lot out of her.

"Next time." Judd said. "I told you you were gonna make me cum in my pants, and, uh..."

He shifted and felt the inevitable post-orgasm remorse as his softening dick rubbing against semen. Emily fought the urge to laugh by burying her face in his neck, but Judd could still feel her lips curve up into a smile.

"Oh, that's funny to you?" He said, turning her so that she was cradled in his arms.

She looked so angelic to him, so comfortable. He wanted to see her like this every day of his life. Her eyes were tired and she slipped her arms up around his neck, nuzzling into him lovingly.

Judd kissed her temple. "God, you really are perfect."

"Can I have a cigarette?" She asked.

Again, he would've given her absolutely anything. Judd lit a cigarette for the two of them and fed it to her, holding it to her lips that were raw from kisses while she breathed in the smoke.

They stopped by the Birch home on their way back to Emily's house. She'd made the comment that she would have to sneak back in through her window to avoid letting Bruce see her so exposed. Judd wasn't having that, he made a sharp turn and told her to stay put while he sprinted up to his bedroom to grab her a hoodie.

His loud footsteps made his presence known to his family, and Leah peaked her head into the hallway to ask, "Hey, what's the rush?!"

Judd ignored her and jogged back down the stairs, slamming the door behind him.

Leah ran to her window to catch the slightest glimpse of the girl her big brother was so enamored with. The two locked eyes and Emily smiled at her, then waved, through the windshield.

The two lovers kissed for a long time at the end of her street, with Judd telling her "just one more" every time she tried to pull away. Emily always gave in. 

"Just stay with me tonight, Emmy." He said and tugged at her waist, trying to coax her back into his lap. She thought she would die every time he called her by one of the assigned nicknames. "They're probably already asleep, what's the worst that could happen?"

Emily responded between kisses.

"They could send me off again."

_Kiss._

"They could ground me indefinitely."

_Smooch._

"They could stop me from seeing you."

Judd's heart seized up at the last statement. He'd never had a true fear until that thought entered his mind. There, it festered, it bred.

"They could try, but it wouldn't work." He said.

Emily smiled and gave him one last kiss for the road, then hopped out of his car before he could stop her. Judd watched her jog down the street in his rear view mirror.

He laid his head against the steering wheel once she disappeared because he knew that he was fucked.


	9. Dancing With The Devil

Emily stood in a massive room surrounded by a mixture of strangers and classmates that she only knew in passing. The walls were big cement blocks painted white with bright lights shining down onto the works of art hanging from the walls.

Students that were in electives for the privilege of going on more outings than the students that just showed up for core classes and remedial. This was one of them — a trip to the city to visit a museum. But in order to make it curriculum appropriate, each Art Class student was told to pick one piece and write a report on it.

There were other kids there than just the artsy ones — art students, drama students, music appreciation, and band students all tended to get lumped together Emily had realized. They hung out together in the hallways and ate lunch together. Not her. As the last two weeks passed, she'd begun joining Judd in the parking lot during lunch. They spend the hour inhaling cigarettes and then kissing smoke off of each other's lips.

He made her eat, too. Though he understood that she was misdiagnosed with having an eating disorder, Judd still brought her coffee every morning for breakfast and at least a bag of chips for lunch. He knew that once she got home, her headphones went on and she'd forget to eat completely if she got too focused on her art.

Emily didn't like analyzing other people's art. It wasn't like poetry, she didn't feel that it was _meant_ to be analyzed. She didn't like people analyzing her own because it very seldom meant anything deeper than "this image popped into my mind and I could feel my fingers itching until I put it on canvas". But it was a graded assignment, so she chose a painting that she knew the other students would be too embarrassed to spend a long time staring at.

A painting of Persephone suspended in the air above Hades, in all her ethereal beauty. And Hades, on his knees, kneeling before the Queen of the Dead.

A man spoke through the headset she was listening to, a pre-recorded lecture about the (false) story of Hades and Persephone. It made sense to Emily that it was being told from the voice of a male narrator, since men had been the ones to ultimately twist their beautiful love story in the first place.

She'd come to learn a long while ago that Persephone wasn't dragged to the underworld against her will, she'd wandered there. And she hadn't eaten those pomegranate seeds by mistake either.

Emily was sketching a rough draft of the painting in her notebook so that she could refer back to it later. This was how most of her books looked — scribbled manically with whatever came into her mind. To some it would look like the ramblings of an insane person, and maybe it was, but to her they made perfect sense.

A gentle finger tapped her on the shoulder, Emily didn't know how long the girl had been standing next to her, she often tuned out everything around her once her mind found something to obsess over.

"Sorry, not trying to interrupt." The girl said. "I was just watching you draw."

Emily recognizes the girl. They'd never met, but they'd locked eyes a few weeks ago.

"I'm Leah." She said, and smiled.

Emily introduced herself. She had a hard time believing that this girl and Judd were biological siblings. They looked nothing alike and seemed opposite in almost every way. Leah was bubbly and bright, she was pretty. Emily could already see her as a drawing she'd have to put on paper or canvas or even just a napkin in a gas station, but she tried not to let her brain fixate too much on that for now.

"You're Judd's sister, right?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, and you're Judd's...." Her voice trailed off as she waited for Emily to give herself a proper title, but honestly, she didn't know.

"Friend." She said, not wanting to misrepresent herself. "We're good friends."

"Right. His _friend._ "

Leah smiled when she spoke and her tone said that she absolutely didn't believe the girl in front of her. Emily could tell that the siblings weren't that far apart in age, maybe a year and a half at most. She didn't think that the two were very close, considering the fact that Judd almost never spoke about his home life, but she would bet money that they were oddly protective of each other.

"I just wanted to introduce myself. I've seen you two together in the halls and it's just strange, watching my brother hang out with someone that isn't as gloomy as he is."

Usually, this would be where the conversation ends. Emily would go back to her manic sketching of every shadow and highlight and Leah would return to her drama class friends. But Leah didn't move, and Emily followed her eyes down to the sketch pad again.

"Are you wanting to watch?" Emily asked, and Leah looked both embarrassed and confused. "Draw — do you want to keep watching me draw? Sometimes people just stand over my shoulder and watch like I'm some kind of circus animal, it's creepy. I don't mind them watching if they just tell me they want to."

Leah smiled and the girls sat side by side on the floor against the wall. She didn't talk much while Emily worked herself into a rhythm of glancing up at the painting for only half a second and then adding a little more detail to the paper in front of her.

"How do you do that?" Leah asked. "Everything I draw looks like a third grader did it."

"Honestly, I don't know. Sometimes I think of something I want to draw and it's like it claws at my brain until I put it on paper, other times I just draw what I see — like now, or like in art class. But it's good to start with just drawing boxes."

Leah asked her what she meant and Emily spent the next hour showing the girl how everything can be broken down into simple shapes and then reassembled to create something completely different. She didn't usually like teaching people new things, it became frustrating when they weren't immediately receptive to what she was saying — but Leah was like a sponge, absorbing in all of the information that Emily put out there.

After a while, Leah had drawn her very own hand on the clipboard resting on her lap. It didn't look too bad, especially for a beginner.

"What do you think you'll do with this? I mean, are there really very many jobs out there for artists?"

Emily shrugged, "Not conventional ones. Most artists don't really get recognized until after they're dead."

She stopped to wonder if that would've been her case had her suicide attempt been successful. Would her dozens of finished canvases have been hung up in museums? Maybe they would've gone in the trash after her mother moved on. Emily knew that Bruce would convince her to let go of them eventually.

"Hopefully after graduation I can get a tattoo apprenticeship in the city. It won't be the most luxurious life, but there's something comforting about someone loving your work enough to put in on their body."

Leah could see her drama friends making their way back from the "living art" exhibitions. They weren't required to write reports in their class, so she'd grown bored of the day trip pretty quickly and strayed from the group.

"I really wanted you to suck, you know." Leah lifted herself up and offered Emily a helping hand. "I wanted to meet you and be able to tell Judd to ditch you like he usually does girls. His last ex really fucked him up for a while."

"He hasn't told me much about her. She's in my art class though."

Leah shot daggers across the room and though Emily didn't look that direction, she knew it was directed toward Rowan.

"Well, he likes you — and that's saying a lot. I don't know if you've noticed, but Judd kind of hates everybody."

To be honest, she really _hadn't_ noticed that. She got the vibe, but Emily mostly only saw the more closeted side of Judd — aside from when he punched Val in the face.

"And I like you, too. So don't fuck it up." Leah began walking away, "You should come over for dinner sometime. Our mom makes a mean pot roast."

Emily went outside to smoke a cigarette and then started her report on the bus ride back to Bridgeton.

* * *

That incessant feeling haunted Emily all day — the feeling of imaginary marionette strings pulling at her fingers while an image begged to be brought to life. She'd feel jittery until giving into the sensation, so after a painfully quiet dinner with her parents, she did.

Emily sat down on the floor with a pallet of paint beside her. She would use one of her bigger canvases for this piece. As she got started, she realized how much red she'd have to use.

So much _red_.

It began to play tricks on her eyes, she'd get it on her hands or thighs and become convinced that she was bleeding. Could she stop it? Had she gone too far?

Still, the painting had to get done. She worked with her headphones in, Hozier's angelic voice helped her forget about the dull ache in her wrist. It started to become unbearable when she was just about three quarters of the way done.

The music was ripped out of her ears abruptly and she rolled over to face the assailant, assuming it to be Bruce.

"No need to give me the death stare, damn." Judd said. He stood above her, looking down at her on the floor.

Emily realized that she was probably looking at him as if he'd just killed all of her loved ones, so she softened her face. Her shoulders relaxed and legs stretched out along the carpet. "I thought you were Bruce, dude."

He looked over her shoulder at the nearly finished painting of a woman and presumably Satan dancing. "It's like you're possessed when you get on a roll. I've been texting you for two hours."

She grabbed her phone off to the side and saw that she'd missed four calls from him and had six texts. "Gross, it's like you _like_ me or something." She teased.

Judd's arms scooped her up off the floor so easily. It's a nice sensation, Emily thought, when your body is so familiar with someone else's that it doesn't recoil when they touch you. She hadn't had that in quite some time and wanted to hold onto it. He sat down on the edge of her bed with her legs straddling his lap.

"You met my sister today." Judd said.

"I did." Emily kissed his chin and along his jaw, trailing down his neck until she heard the low groan that told her she was at the right spot.

Her mouth was so _warm_ against Judd's skin. He pressed his palm into the small of her back, holding her against him.

Safe — that's how Emily felt when Judd was around. Even when she knew that his presence was forbidden and it could cause her life to come crashing down again, she still felt safe. She knew that he wouldn't allow anyone to hurt her.

He felt her teeth graze the artery in his neck and his cock began to swell, pressing against her core through their clothes. Emily alternated between sucking that particular spot gently and then lapping at it like a kitten laps up milk. Soon, blood began to rise to the surface of his skin.

"Wait —" Judd said. Her fingers had dipped down his shirt and were playing with the waist of his jeans, she was working the button open. "You don't have to. I mean — I don't want to push you into something you haven't done before."

Emily smirked against his neck. It'd been almost two weeks since she'd felt his fingers inside of her and that night had stirred a craving that she hadn't felt before. It was insatiable.

She needed him to know how badly she wanted him.

"I've given blowjobs before, Judd." She said as she slid off of his lap to her knees in front of him.

Any reservations he had about the act were gone in an instant. Judd stood off the edge of the bed and helped her with the zipper, leaving his jeans to pool around his ankles. He'd never seen anything as angelic as her, on her knees, pressing her lips against the strained member through his underwear.

"Fuckin' Christ, Emmy." He breathed, brushing her cheek with his thumb. "You're so pretty, baby."

Emily squeezed his cock through the fabric and felt his hand go stiff. She knew what he wanted — to take her by the hair and force her mouth onto him. The worst part was that half of her wished he'd just act on those impulses. It was obvious how much he was holding back.

She'd never been one to test her limits, and Judd had never been one to dilute himself, yet here they were.

"How pretty do you think I'll be with your cock in my throat?" She asked almost innocently.

Judd was fucking floored. He'd never considered any words "dirty" until then, and they sounded absolutely vile being spoken in her sweet tone of voice. That's what made them so sexy, that's what made his cock throb so hard that it hurt — the fact that he knew angels weren't supposed to speak like that.

Emily pulled his cock out of his underwear and licked the swollen head, precum coated her tongue. Slowly, she made her way down his shaft, keeping her lips pressed tight against the skin, feeling every vein as he slid into her throat. Judd was bigger than the other guys she'd sucked off. She'd anticipated that — tall, skinny guys were usually blessed with thicker cocks, she'd heard, and it was true.

Her hand held the base of his cock and it wasn't until her lips met that barrier that Judd slid his fingers into her hair, gripping right at the nape of her neck. He felt a moan vibrate against his shaft and cursed because he knew that he was going to do absolutely horrible, amazing things to this girl.

"All the way down." He moaned, his emerald eyes coaxing her further. "I know you can take it."

She closed her eyes as tears welled up in them and her lips slid down to the hilt. Judd loved the sound it made, her choking on him. She worked him over like that for only a few minutes — sucking him all the way down and then lapping at the head while she caught her breath.

Even on her knees she contained a level of poise that he didn't usually find this irresistible.

Judd tightened his grip on her hair, "Where do you want it?" He asked, though she wasn't given an option.

He guided her head down again and held her throat around her cock. All the way down, just like he'd said. She heard him begin to unload in her mouth before she felt it, the deep, gravely moans that escaped his lungs were music to her ears. Then she felt the warmth of his cum and she worked to swallow it all.

"Holy shit..." Judd groaned through the last sputter. "Holy fucking _shit_."

Emily kept her lips locked tight around him until she felt his body relax and heard his moans reduce to pants. When she pulled away, only a string of saliva still connected the two. Judd leaned down and grabbed her by the jaw, he kissed her hard. He kissed her passionately.

He kissed her like he loved her. She'd had boys kiss her like that before. It didn't make it true.

"Gross, don't kiss me. I just swallowed your cum!" Emily said with a humored smile on her face.

"You could have fucking shit in your mouth and I'd still kiss you."

Judd straightened up and Emily rolled back onto her stomach on the floor. She resumed the work on her painting as if she hadn't just been blowing him for ten minutes.

"That's a kink that I just can't get behind, Judd Birch." She said. The rough denim of his pants scraped against the back of her thighs as he kicked them off and onto her. Emily looked over her shoulder, he was pantsless in the middle of her room. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Letting my balls dry. They're _covered_ in spit, Em."

She felt a small amount of pride as she turned her attention back to her work. "You're welcome."

Judd watched her from afar for a few moments. She looked tired, he thought. He'd done this a few times now in the past few weeks — snuck in her window just to watch her get lost in a painting or drawing. It was like watching a doctor perform heart surgery, every move she made was so precise, every stroke had a meaning.

This time, he lay on the floor beside her, his body held up by his elbow. He liked this painting in particular.

"I'm sorry that I'm like this." She said, seemingly out of nowhere.

"What are you talking about?" Judd asked. Sadness in her tone had exposed itself.

"I'm sorry that I get obsessed with whatever's in front of me. You sneak in and probably expect my undivided attention, but once I get this image in my mind it just won't go away. They said it's part of my anxiety but the meds don't fucking help."

Judd's angry expression never faltered, now was no exception. His brow was knitted together in what was actually confusion but presented itself as annoyance.

"I like watching you work, baby." Emily's heart skipped a beat every time he called her that. "I sneak in because I want to be around you, I don't expect shit."

He kissed her gently and she went back to work. The painting was done in half an hour and it was beautiful, she thought that it was her favorite in quite a while.

"Can I have this one?" Judd asked.

She knew her mother would have a stroke if she saw the blood red covered canvas hanging on her wall. It might as well go somewhere it would be appreciated.

"Sure. It'll have to dry for a few days first."

Judd took it upon himself to place the canvas against the corner. He'd memorized the mess in her room by heart. To most, it looked like a vortex of collected, meaningless items, but to the two of them everything had a place. Blank canvases and sketch pads were in the closet, both on the floor and on the shelf above her clothes. Finished and dried paintings were leaned against the wall to the right of the closet, finished but wet ones were in the corner and along the wall leading to her desk. Her desk was a war field covered in land mines — Judd didn't fuck with that space. There were always sticks of charcoal and open tubes of paint sitting out, sometimes even stray cups of water and wet brushes. On the other side of her desk was her door, always locked. The third wall held her nightstand and head of her bed and on the fourth was the window. Judd's metaphorical gates to heaven. It stayed unlocked lately, and he knew he was always welcome.

"I want you to meet my friends." Judd said abruptly. He almost sounded nervous when he spoke, too eager, as if he was asking for her hand in marriage. "I mean — they won't stop asking about you. We're going geocaching this weekend and they want you to come."

He watched her eyebrow cock in contemplation. Now that she'd gotten that image out of her head, the one of some sultry woman dancing with the devil, she began to seem like herself again.

" _They_ want me to come or _you_ do?" She asked.

Positive affirmation. It was Emily's milk and honey.

"I want you with me all the time." Judd said.

"Okay, I'll come." She smiled and rolled into his chest, kissing him again on the lips. "Will Leah be there?"

"Fuck no. She's my sister, not my friend. Plus she brought you up at dinner tonight so now our parents are nagging me about you, too."

Emily didn't want to meet Judd's parents. She didn't want to get attached to a family that wasn't hers or see what her life might've been had her dad not died. Plus, she didn't particularly trust adults anymore, not after all the ones in her life had betrayed her, so she didn't press the subject.

The two of them settled onto her windowsill, Emily wrapping her comforter around her waist. October in New York wasn't quite as cold as it was in Mass, but her shorts and tank top gave her little warmth on their own.

"You can stay the night if you want. Bruce hasn't been checking in on me before he goes to work lately." She said as smoke escaped through her lips. Emily knew that if she'd just light up a cigarette every time the nagging need to create art tugged at her mind, she could likely control it. But then that would leave her as a chain smoker, just like her grandmother, who passed at sixty-five from lung cancer.

Judd fished around in his pocket and produced two red and blue pills. "I've got some things to do tonight, I really just came by to deliver these."

He'd read in her file that Restoril was the sedative that she'd responded best to in the hospital, having a surgeon as a dad pays off sometimes. Judd dropped the pills into her hand and she shook them in her fist like lucky dice.

"Name brand? You spoil me." She smiled.

Emily moved to pop both of them in her mouth and Judd caught her by the wrist, "Just _ONE_! What are you, crazy?!"

"You have an entire folder telling you the answer to that." She said, then proceeded to swallow them dry. "And don't worry, I'm kind of an expert at taking pills."

Judd huffed down the last of his cigarette and then tossed it onto the grass outside. "Get some sleep, please." He said as he lowered himself out of the window, leaning his head back inside only to kiss her goodbye.

"I won't have a choice." Emily replied.

Judd left and she finished off her cigarette while scrolling through her phone, quickly reading poems written by names that no one would ever remember.

_You love him despite the burden of Atlas_   
_resting on his shoulder,_   
_and he loves you despite the_   
_death still clinging to your lips,_   
_and the blood drying at it's_   
_corners._   
_What a pair you make._


	10. Judd + Em

"Are you nervous?" Judd asked as he passed a blunt to Emily.

They sat in his Jeep in a vacant parking lot on the edge of town. It was just past nine o'clock, but it was beginning to get dark earlier and earlier in Bridgeton. A lone streetlamp shined in through the windows and illuminated their faces. They'd made plans with Judd's friends to go "geocaching" that night, and Emily cashed in her two-free-nights-a-week-card with her mom (against Bruce's wishes).

"I don't think so. Should I be?" She traded him the blunt for her cigarette and they inhaled simultaneously.

"No. They're nice." Judd said. "Nicer than me, I mean."

Emily felt nice. She was comfortable. The THC was settling into her brain and easing all of her anxieties much quicker than the Lexapro ever did, allowing her to feel warm and fuzzy all over.

"Did you take your anxiety medicine?" He asked, earning an eye roll from Emily. "I know that's not an attitude I'm detecting, Em."

Judd had started the habit of reminding her (every. single. day.) to take her medication, and Emily appreciated it, but it was still fun to pick at him. She took a final hit from the blunt before snuffing it out in his ashtray, then turned in the passenger seat to face him.

"Yes, _dad._ I took it right before you picked me up. Happy?"

He leaned across the middle console and slid his hand into her hair, "Change that to _'daddy'_ and I will be."

Emily savored the smoky taste of his lips against hers. He kissed her gently, deliberately, making her lean forward as the craving for more swallowed her up. Headlights engulfed them soon though and their moment was over.

"You ready?" He asked her, and she nodded before letting herself out of the Jeep.

The car in front of them was an old, beat up van that'd been spray painted a flat grey. Emily fully expected an array of carnies to pop out as the door slid open, or maybe a gang of depressed teenagers just as gloomy as Judd himself. She was pleasantly mistaken.

Three other teenagers filed out of the side and the driver rounded the corner of the hood. Emily recognized the only other girl as Maggie, Val's girlfriend. The three guys though, she'd never seen even in passing.

"Guys, this is Emily." Judd said as cigarettes began being passed around the loosely formed circle. "Em, you know Maggs. This is Cato, Riley and Lincoln."

The boy identified as Lincoln handed Emily a stoge, "Just call me Link. It's about fuckin' time Judd brought you around."

"We were starting to get the impression he was _embarrassed_ of us." Cato said.

Judd wrapped his arm around Emily's shoulder and gave her a light. "That's because I am. You idiots are a fucking travesty."

The three guys didn't seem to take Judd's insults to heart like some other people may have. They laughed and sucked down their cigarettes quickly. Cato was holding his phone in his hand, scrolling through something that Emily couldn't see.

"Are we splitting into teams or working together?" Maggie asked. She tugged at Emily's sleeve and effectively pulled her away from Judd. "If we're on teams, I wanna be with Em."

"I already told you, dipshit, she's mine." Judd said. A brief tug-of-war ensued between the two with Emily stuck in the middle as the rope.

"She doesn't belong to you, asshole."

"Oh yeah?" Judd made one final tug and hoisted the girl over his shoulder. Emily yelped and the three boys burst into laughter as he slid the van door open on its track. Judd took care to hold the back of her head so she wouldn't bump it on the way in.

Soon Emily found herself sitting on the carpeted floor of the van, all of the back seats had been removed to create a rather humble space meant solely for smoking, fucking, and just hanging out. The others filed in behind them, besides Riley, who loaded himself back into the driver's seat. He drove slow so that Maggie could roll them a community blunt while they started their journey.

"Maggs is a pro at rolling, that's the real reason her and Val are together." Link said, and Maggie rolled her eyes.

" _Together_. Right." She scoffed. "We do drugs and fuck, I wouldn't call that much of a relationship."

"Yeah, well, you're not letting anyone else hit it." Riley commented from the front.

Emily looked at each of the faces surrounding her — they didn't look how she'd expected. They weren't dressed in all black or carrying weapons on their hip. Really, they looked exceptionally normal. Lincoln was even wearing basketball shorts, Emily couldn't _imagine_ Judd in basketball shorts!

Maggie passed her the blunt and soon she was even higher than she'd been before. After twenty minutes, it felt like they'd been driving for an hour. Emily couldn't feel a thing. It was her favorite sensation.

"Hey, you okay?" Judd asked.

She realized then that his arm was still draped over her shoulder. Judd's voice came from above her and it took her a moment to respond. She looked up into his luminescent, bloodshot eyes and couldn't help but to smile.

"Yeah, I'm just really high." She finally replied.

Emily felt Judd's hand brush her cheek and it made her tingle all over. A swarm of bees flew into her ear, causing her face to vibrate as he lowered his lips down to hers. When he kissed her, Emily was suddenly so warm. It felt like the middle of summer, being next to him. Her whole body was on fire and when she felt his soft tongue lick hers, she thought she would melt into the carpet.

"Ahem—" Cato coughed, "Excuse me, lovebirds. We're all still here."

Maggie smacked him and mumbled the word "rude" under her breath, but Judd pulled away anyways. He just needed to mark his territory before they came to their destination, which was quickly approaching. Riley pulled the van off the side of the road and behind a thick wall of brush. When the door slid open, Emily could see that they were surrounded by a whole lot of nothing at all.

"Ugh, is this another one of those creepy ones?" Judd complained as he followed the others out of the car.

"You're one to talk about something being 'creepy', Birch." Riley handed Judd and Maggie both small flashlights and kept one for himself.

Emily suddenly felt very sober as she looked out into the forest. They were submerged in a sea of trees and she'd seen _The Blair Witch Project_ one too many times to feel safe in this environment.

Until she felt Judd's fingers slip between hers and hold her hand tight. He flicked the flashlight on and shined it up onto his face, meaning to spook her, but instead granting her some sort of strange comfort in the darkness.

"All right, I'm texting you guys the details now. Maggs, you're with me. Cato's linkin' up with Link—" Riley paused to laugh at his own joke, "and of course, the happy couple is our third team. Winner gets bragging rights and doesn't have to pay for their dinner later. Ready?"

Emily felt Judd's hand squeeze and the moment Riley said, "Go!", he was dragging her along with him.

Judd was fast. His long legs pulled him through the woods and around trees easily. Emily couldn't at all see where she was going, but she could hear the scurrying of the other teenagers' feet and the breaking of twigs under their weight and it made her feel like she was actually searching for something important — like the One Ring or the final horcrux. Exhilaration filled her up and presented itself as bubbling laughter.

He pulled her along for twenty more yards and then finally stopped to survey his surroundings.

"What are we even looking for?" Emily asked.

Judd pulled out his phone and showed her the photo of a bundle of branches illuminated by a flashlight. In the night, those branches looked like a mating ball of snakes, all slithery and creepy. In the center she could see what looked like a shotgun shell.

"That's tiny, how are we supposed to find that out here?"

"You're _supposed_ to find it during the day, but everything is more fun at night."

Judd continued to lead the way and Emily's participation was limited only to where he shined their light. It was weird out there, in the darkness. The night surrounded them completely and submerged them into a place that Emily had never visited before. She felt like she was in some sort of dark fairytale — the ones that include trails of candy leading children to their demise and wolves who gobble up old ladies and their granddaughters.

"I think it's gonna be close to the ground." Judd said. Half an hour passed and they had no clue where the others had run off to.

Emily looked up through the broken trees. They were losing their leaves already, soon enough they'd be naked and shivering from the winter chill. The moonlight made them look silver and shimmery.

A glimmer reflected off one of the trees.

"Wait, what's that?" Emily said. She approached the tree cautiously, as if it were going to reach out with its long, gangly arms and snatch her up.

There she could see it. High up in the branches sat the roots that looked too much like a snake's nest. She could feel Judd approach her from behind.

"It's too far for me to reach." He said, then placed the flashlight between his teeth. Judd grabbed Emily by the waist and lifted her onto his shoulders seemingly with ease.

She strained her arms, stretching them far over her head as the light jiggled nervously. The roots felt just as cringey as they looked and Emily held her breath to stop from gagging.

" _Fuck!_ I'm almost there!" She grunted.

The next thing she knew, Judd's hand was sliding further up her thigh, squeezing her through her leggings. "Yeah?" He mumbled, then spit out the flashlight. "You're gonna be saying that again here in a little while."

Emily nearly jumped out of her skin. That jump gave her enough leverage to shove her hand into the snake ball/roots and grasps the shell casing in her fingers. "I got it!" she shouted, every bit of excitement showing in her tone.

"You did?!" Judd leaned down, lowering her to her feet. She held up the metallic cylinder and it's gold finish shined against the moonlight. It was like the golden ticket to him, except there was only _one_ in the world and they were in possession of it.

Judd reached into his back pocket and pulled out something that Emily couldn't see — at least not until the universe around her lit up red.

So much _red_.

It flashed bright and violently, blinding her for a few moments after it faded. She heard the collective groans of the others far off in the distance as they realized they'd lost, then she was wrapped in a heavy blanket of limbs.

Warm, long, heavy limbs — Judd's limbs. She could feel the excitement in his bones as he squeezed her. It was short lived, but it was enough. He took the casing from her and jimmied out a small roll of paper that was scribbled with an even smaller roll of names.

"Here, you have better handwriting than I do. Write our names on there." He handed her a pen and Emily used her knee as a surface.

_Judd + Em_

She scribbled it before even realizing how cheesy it looked and prayed that Judd wouldn't inspect her signature before putting it back. Of course, that wasn't the case — he shined his light on the tiny scroll and smirked.

"What??" She asked, ready to defend herself.

"Nothin'." Judd leaned down and kissed her forehead. "You're just cute."

Maggie and Riley found them first, followed by Cato and Link shortly after. "It's kinda nice out here. I wish I would've brought some firewood, we could've just cleared out a pit and roasted hot dogs." Cato said.

Emily liked the woods, they had a whimsical air to them, but she didn't enjoy the idea of staying out here much longer. It wasn't quite cold enough for all of the bugs from summer to have died off and she felt like they were crawling on her ankles, every now and then one would buzz past her ear and she had to wonder — was that a fly, or is the crazy _really_ starting to settle in this time?

"I believe you fuckers owe us some dinner." Judd said.

He lifted Emily quickly back up onto her shoulders and she placed the geocache into its hiding place once again. There she remained. Judd carried her at the back of the pack all the way through the woods until they were met again by the safety of the road, and Riley's molester van.

"What's even open this late?" Maggie asked. She glanced at her phone and it was half past midnight.

Emily was sure that her parents had had _some_ sort of curfew in mind for her. But if they did, they never informed her of that time, and she hadn't received any frantic _"where the hell are you??"_ texts from her mother.

"That deli off of Liberty Parkway." Riley said.

"Gross." Judd responded, "Let's hit up the diner on 23rd."

The five locals agreed on the diner while Emily was simply along for the ride. They filed into the van _again_ , smoked a blunt _again_ , and _again_ Emily found herself stuck in between the petty bickering of Maggie and Judd. She didn't know what about this time, having gotten too high to focus on their voices. Instead she leaned her shoulder back against Judd and allowed the Eagles that was playing low on the radio to soothe her scattered mind.

They got to the diner and it was surprisingly packed for how late it was. Drunks and other teenagers like themselves were squeezed into booths. It was a "seat yourself" type deal, and only one table was open, so they did just as everyone else and sat far too close for comfort. Riley, Maggs and Link on one side with Judd, Emily and Cato on the other.

"Judd tells us you're an artist." Maggie said. The girl placed her elbow on the table then rested her chin in her hand. She really was too pretty for words to describe, Emily thought. The dark freckles that scattered across every inch of her like the night sky declared that summer wasn't quite over. Her skin held onto that season desperately, giving her complexion life. Her ginger hair was perfect in its loose curls, not a strand out of place.

"Something like that." Emily replied, then felt a hand squeeze her thigh.

"Stop selling yourself short." Judd said. He looked down at her with a heavy gaze and she could see that his words weren't a compliment, they were an _order._ "She's crazy good. After we graduate she's moving to the city for a tattoo apprenticeship."

So he and Leah really _had_ talked about her. The others were interested immediately in having a friend that did tattoos. They berated her with questions about her style and if she'd heard of so-and-so that owned a tattoo shop wherever. Emily hadn't heard of any of them and, if she were being honest, her head began to spin from the overstimulation.

Eventually the waitress came over and they ordered.

"Oh, uh, just some toast for me, please." Emily said, and the waitress began scribbling it down.

"Give her two banana pancakes and a coffee." Judd followed casually.

The waitress gave Emily a concerned look, the kind that says _"If you need help, let me know"_ without actually saying anything at all. She left when Emily didn't jump up and cling to her apron for dear life.

But there was still the issue of Judd — the ongoing issue. He'd been a lovely nuisance in her life since the day they met and now was no different. Emily was caught in between hating the way he held the reins of their relationship and being hopelessly turned on by how smooth the ride was. He steered her whichever way he pleased as if it were natural to him and, no matter how loud her mind screamed for her to go her own way, the throbbing between her legs told her to just shut up and obey.

So her head and heart compromised by testing his patience.

Emily slid her fingers over Judd's knee, dancing up the leg of his jeans beneath the table. She felt him stiffen instantly and, though she stared straight ahead at the others, she knew his gaze was fixed upon her. Out of her peripheral vision she could see the slight tension in his jaw as if he wanted to ask, _"what the FUCK do you think you're doing?"_.

Still, she probed further — creeping her thumb up his thigh until she felt the swollen head of his cock. Judd squeezed her thigh and it _hurt_. A warning. _Any further and you're gonna regret it._

He pulled out his phone and soon enough, she felt the vibration of a text message from her pocket.

_Do you really think I won't make you cum on my hand right here in front of everyone?_

It was the most vulgar thing anybody had ever told her in the presence of others. She was sure her face was blood red just from reading that single sentence.

"What's wrong?" Riley asked with genuine concern. "You look like you just saw a fucking ghost. Your parents text you?"

He was so kind — they all were. So kind that it almost made Emily feel bad for swallowing her pride and lying.

"Uh.. yeah. She's pretty pissed that I'm out so late." She looked up at Judd and he saw the way her eyes had darkened. The clear blue sky that they once resembled was now cloudy with the threat of a storm. "I think you need to take me home, Judd." She said, then thumbed over his cock once more.

He simply nodded and when Riley offered to give them a ride back to his Jeep, Judd declined instantly. A few minutes later they were out the door, hustling down the sidewalk in the direction of the vacant lot from which they came. Emily kept up well with the steady pace that his long legs set, his hand clasped around hers.

"You're gonna regret that, you know." Judd said, almost laughing.

Emily was just about to respond with something sassy and probably infuriating to Judd when her body ubruptly changed course. He grabbed her by the forearm and pulled her with him into an alley — the dark, seedy type of alley that you see on true crime documentaries. She felt her back hit the concrete wall of a building and her leggings being pulled away from her body. Judd's breath hit her ear the same moment that his fingers found the crotch of her panties.

"You're fuckin' soaked." He groaned in that deep, gravely voice that she loved so much. "Was it the text that did this or the fact that you were stroking me off in public?"

Emily's breathing stifled as her underwear bunched up at her core, pressing into her firmly and causing a sort of friction that brought both pain and pleasure.

"Answer me, Emmy." He growled, then attacked her throat. Judd couldn't resist the urge to sink his teeth into her any longer. He felt her smooth skin on his tongue and craved more, so he indulged, sucking on her neck and then biting down gently.

"The text, the text!" She chanted.

She sounded somewhat terrified. It was then that Judd realized she _was_ scared — scared that he'd stop. He slipped his fingers beneath her panties and dipped his finger just between her lips, dragging the wetness over her clit.

"You like that dirty shit? When I talk to you?" He asked, and she nodded desperately. Judd kissed his way up her jaw and leaned his forehead against hers. "Good, now I know. We're making progress."

He pulled his hand out of her leggings and watched her become dumbfounded.

Emily stared at him, completely confused, and stuttered, "What are you — are we no—not gonna —"

"In a dirty alley?" He said, "No. I'm not gonna fuck you by a dumpster where some homeless guy sleeps, Em. I mean, I'm not gonna fuck you tonight regardless, but especially not _here."_

She readjusted her pants and, though thoroughly disappointed, accepted that answer. Judd draped his arm around her shoulder and corralled her back toward the sidewalk. She stepped in time with him down the street, quietly screaming as her hormones raged.

They made it back to his car, still the only one in the parking lot. Judd popped the hatch and laid the back seats forward, leaving ample room. He'd done this before, that's why there was an abundance of pillows and blankets back there.

"What are we doing?" Emily asked.

Judd cocked his eyebrow at her and smiled. "You're not _that_ naive." He said, then lifted himself up into the back of his car. Judd leaned back against the pallet, waiting for her to join him.

It was almost two in the morning and she knew she'd pay for staying out so late, but looking at Judd there — his legs sprawled out casually, shoes kicked off, arms folded behind his head — it reminded her of the painting he'd claimed. The one of the woman indulging in a dance with the devil. Some people would ask ' _Why?? Why would someone knowingly do something that would get them in trouble?'_ , but she knew why — because the devil was charming. He had a tongue like a snake and fingers that felt like heaven, even for someone that had never considered themselves holy.

Sometimes being on the devil's side felt safer than standing behind Heaven's gates. Sometimes it simply felt nice, too nice for anyone to turn down.

Emily crawled into the back of Judd's car and pulled the latch shut. It was dark back there, but after a small adjustment period, he could see her climbing on top of him. She reminded Judd of a succubus that takes advantage of lucky guys like him in the night, or of the sleep paralysis he used to experience. Except he didn't mind the sensation of her shadow merging with his, he liked the feeling of her body fitting against his own so perfectly.

Judd felt her silky hair as he pushed his fingers through it, he tasted her watermelon flavored chapstick against his lips as they kissed.

She'd always been like a refreshing sip of water to him. So clean, so pure. He wanted to swallow every last drop of her.

Judd held her hips and sat up with her on his lap. He slid his hand around to the front of her throat but he didn't choke her... no, he just kissed her so hard and so passionately that she forgot whose breath filled her lungs. His, or her own? It didn't matter, she was being fed all of the love that she'd ever been denied.

He kissed down her neck, lapping over the spot he'd marked half an hour earlier, then grazing over her collarbone. Judd laid her back gently onto the pillows and blankets surrounding them and pushed her shirt up against her torso.

"You're beautiful." He whispered in the darkness and his words fell onto her stomach as he kissed every inch of her skin. "Not just when we're messing around, you're always beautiful."

Judd thought he heard her whisper his name but he was too enamored by the feeling of her ribs against his lips. How could a human's skin feel this soft? Had his other lovers been so angelic? His nose brushed against her belly button and her hip bones suffered more than one love bite as he traveled further down.

Emily's leggings, underwear and shoes melted off of her like ice cream on a hot day. The cool air felt nice between her thighs, which were damp. Judd could see them shimmering in the dim streetlamp light that shined outside. He adored the wispy blonde hair that sat trimmed neatly between her legs. He kissed it gently as his cheek rested against the inside of her thigh.

"You're mine —" Judd said as he nudged her legs apart, kissing everywhere but the spot that ached the worst. "All mine. Right, baby?"

She nodded in response as she slid her fingers through his hair, "Yours."

"Good girl."

He dove in, licking a stripe up her lips and then nursing her clit. Emily finally relaxed back into the pillows, moaning into the heavy air around them.

"Holy _shit_..." she breathed, then felt Judd's lips curl up into a satisfied smile.

He held her legs open and began devouring her, massaging her clit with his tongue and then dipping it into her pussy to taste her sweet moisture. _So sweet_. Emily writhed against the floorboard and it almost seemed like she wanted to take control. So Judd let her —

He flattened his tongue and her squirming allowed her to grind her cunt nicely against it. She could please herself just how she wanted like this. Judd eyed up her body as she used him to get off, he could see her pawing at her breasts through her shirt. What he'd give to see the pink peak of her nipples.

Emily's lips parted and she breathed the word, " _daddy, daddy..._ " as if she were quietly reciting prayers in her bedroom.

Judd grabbed her hips. He held her steady against the floor and slid two fingers inside of her, curling them and massaging her pussy while lapping at her clit. He felt her inner walls contract around him and knew that she was falling into such an amazing place, so he kept her there as long as possible.

When she finally came down from her climax, her heavy panting filled the air. It was quiet except for that noise alone, it sounded like soothing, subtle music in the background. Judd kissed up her spent body, over the few marks he'd left on her skin and to her soft lips. Emily tasted herself on his tongue.

"You're so good, baby." Judd whispered as he lay down with her. "And I'm gonna treat you good, I promise."

He pulled one of the many blankets over them and they settled against each other. They kissed. Slow, messy, passionate as their fingers traced over each other. At some point, Judd forgot where her outline ended and his began. He tasted salty tears slipping into his mouth.

Emily had begun to cry. Her heart was too filled with love to hold it all in — love that she hadn't been shown in far too long. Love that she forgot existed.

"Stay with me." Judd meant to ask, but it came out more of a statement. She would stay with him, he knew she would, because the thought of them being apart even just until Monday was gut wrenching. "Right here. Don't leave."

Emily nodded her head and they continued to kiss until the early hours of the morning. She continued to weep. He continued holding her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends my mom is off her meds and I keep forgetting to take mine and I also opened an Etsy shop so as you can imagine, I am feeling very smol under all of this stress.
> 
> Sorry that this story is moving so slowly, I promise it will get spïcy soon enough. Please talk to me if you're enjoying this bc I have low self esteem and thrive on positive affirmation. Thank u.
> 
> Also hopefully the commissioned artwork will be done for this soon.


	11. Eighty Whole Milligrams

Emily sat on the couch nursing a migraine. She felt disgusting. Her hair was greasy from not having showered yet, her clothes were dirty, and she _still_ hadn't used the bathroom since fooling around with Judd the night before. So on top of the migraine, she'd have to chug a gallon of cranberry juice in order to not get a UTI.

"What in the absolute _hell_ has possessed you, Emily?!" Her mother shouted, her shrill voice reminded Emily of the howler that Ron received in _Harry Potter_ , and she winced as the sound pierced through her skull.

"I told you, it was an accident. Leah and I fell asleep watching a movie and by the time I woke up it was too late for me to walk home. I'm sorry."

Her apology sounded less than sincere. In fact, it was rehearsed. Judd knew that she'd be in a load of shit when she got home, so they came up with a believable story together during the drive. Emily sucked down three whole cigarettes during that fifteen minutes, her knees tucked against her chest. She knew that any momentary freedom she had was gone.

"So you _CALL_!" Olivia screeched, "Or you text, ask one of us to pick you up, something! You could've been dead in a ditch somewhere for all we knew!"

Even Bruce rolled his eyes. He stood behind his wife with his arms crossed as if he were actually on her side, really he couldn't care less. Emily leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

Even though her night had been spent in the back of Judd's car, she couldn't remember a time when she'd slept better. If she were only a few months older, that could be her life all the time. Hell, even if she were treated like a normal person. The tight leash her mother kept her on was wrapping even tighter around her neck, suffocating her.

Emily glared up at her mom, "Why can't I be a teenager?" she asked.

Bruce's eyebrows raised from the back of the room. He'd seen plenty of feuds between mother and daughter and knew the tell-tale signs of one in the making.

"You think that locking me in this house is keeping me safe but it's just driving me fucking crazy, mom. _Actually_ crazy!" Emily continued, "I turn eighteen in five months, what incentive are you giving me to stick around after that? I want to make _friends_. Real fucking friends, sometimes that means sleepovers. Is that so fucking radical, that I want friends I can stay the night with?"

Olivia stared at her daughter wide eyed for a moment — the kind a person gives when they know they've been bested, but their pride is too strong to admit that they're wrong — then she sighed, "Can't your friends stay here?"

Emily and Bruce locked eyes. "No. My room is filled with paint and shit, there's no space."

She couldn't stand the idea of Bruce sizing up other girls her age, or the thought of him catching them alone in the kitchen in the middle of the night. Even hypothetical friends, she couldn't bear to put them in harm's way.

Olivia sat on the edge of the couch opposite her daughter, mimicking her stance. She rubbed her temples with her eyes closed. "Why don't you go get ready, sweetie. Let's go to church for guidance and then we can talk about it as a family."

Every nerve in Emily's brain exploded. She threw herself back on the couch, "Ohhhh my goddddd," the maniacal laughter began and Bruce knew that this was the breaking point, "we aren't a fucking family, mom! What don't you understand about that?!"

"Emily!" Her mother shouted in warning.

"You and dad and I were a family! This—" She motioned between the three of them, "We will _never_ be a fucking family! You're my overbearing mother, Bruce is my creepy stepdad, and I'm your daughter that you think is crazy when in reality I'm just so. fucking. _FRUSTRATED!_ I don't want to go to goddamn church!"

Emily's face stung. Her mother had reached across the couch and, for the first time ever, slapped her. The two women looked at each other and understood that their relationship was different now. Olivia was boiling mad, her skin tinted red with rage and embarrassment. And Emily's cheek was stained with the handprint inflicted upon her. She held her face in disbelief.

"Go shower and get ready. We're going to church whether you like it or not."

Olivia's feet were heavy as she walked up the stairs and Bruce followed shortly after.

~

Emily sat in the shower for a long time just staring at her legs through the streams of water trailing down her face. She hadn't done that in some time, just let her mind wander about something that wasn't art. She traced the scars on her thighs with her fingernails. The pain used to feel nice.

You have to have a certain fight in you to self-harm, or so her therapist had once told her. People who self harm want to feel something, anything, even pain. They want to be in control. Emily had once felt that overpowering need to mold and shape her life in her favor, now she didn't want to feel a thing. There wasn't any fight left, it'd all been burnt up just trying to survive. The only thing she craved now was a miracle, and even that desire she didn't latch onto too tightly.

She blow dried her hair and sat on the floor in front of her mirror in a towel. Even getting dressed felt like a chore.

Judd answered her video call without showing his face, he was tucked beneath his comforter with all the lights in his room killed. He'd stolen a bunch of Leah's pillows and shoved them all around him in an attempt to not feel so alone in his oversized bed.

"Baby." His voice was adorable and sleepy.

Emily's heart sank into her feet, she felt nauseous with adoration. "I'm in a lot of trouble." she said.

"I already told you, you being grounded means nothing to me."

"I'm not grounded." She said while sectioning her hair off into her lazy, usual half-up top knot. "They're making me go to church."

Judd peeked his head out from under the blanket. It was still too dark for Emily to see him, but he faked a gag and it made her laugh. That'd been his only goal.

"Fucking gross."

The two sat in silence for a few minutes — Emily focusing on her makeup and Judd focusing on her. Even with dark circles under her eyes she still looked perfect.

"Is it super lame for me to say that I miss you?" She asked. Her lips looked extra pouty, cheek a little bit pinker than usual. Judd thought he could almost make out the long lines of fingerprints stretched out across her face. He'd earned himself marks like that a time or two — from girls, not his parents.

"Super _gay_." He responded. "But I fucking miss you too, Emmy. All the goddamn time."

Judd sat up and turned on his bedside lamp.

"They don't believe me, you know." Emily said. "About me being with Leah. Mom didn't explicitly say it, but I can tell she doesn't believe me. I'm fucked, she isn't gonna let me do anything now."

"We could always just make a run for it. I hear the city doesn't expedite on runaways that are almost eighteen."

Emily scoffed and memories flashed over her irises, Judd could almost see them playing over in her mind. "Yeah, well, Massachusetts always did. They had no problem dragging me back home by the fucking hair."

A door slammed at the end of the hallway in the Birch home. It was easy to forget how early it was when you've been awake for far too long. Judd heard the clicking of his father's "nice" shoes simultaneously with his mother's sharp heels, and a sudden idea popped into his head.

"I'm gonna fix this. I gotta go." He said abruptly. Emily's nose scrunched up with confusion. "Don't give me that look, just trust me."

He hung up and almost pulled the comforter into the hall with him as it was tangled around his lanky frame. Elliot and Diane were halfway out the door when he spied them from the top of the staircase.

"Where's Leah? She's not going with you guys?" He shouted, hasty and more concerned than his family usually witnessed.

"No, honey, she's in her room. Why?" Diane said.

Judd banged on the door across from his and it flew open. "What's with all the shouting?" Leah asked, more annoyed than curious.

"Get dressed." He replied. "You're going to church."

* * *

White walls were unsettling to Emily these days. The worst moments of her life had been spent between walls of that color — the bleached clean white walls of the hospital, closing her in when she was the patient and ripping her limb from limb when it was her dad. The bright, glossy walls of Claymoore, meant to represent both isolation and a fresh start simultaneously. Even the walls of her therapists office, one of the places that she should've been safe, were white and deceiving.

New Hope Methodist Church had white walls, too. It was the only Methodist church in Bridgeton and it was filled to the brim with people — all strangers to Emily. She and her family packed herself in beside everyone else, they found an empty spot against the back wall that wasn't nearly big enough for the three of them, but they managed.

Emily never understood why people dressed up for church. Did God really give a shit if she was wearing a dress or hoodie? Maybe the one her mother believed in did, but Emily didn't believe in anything at all. If God _did_ exist, she figured he owed her a favor or three, considering all the things he turned a blind eye to.

The pastor preached for all of two hours while Emily leaned against her mother's shoulder just trying to stay awake. It was the kind of sermon she hated the most — one that teaches of hellfire and damnation. Sometimes she thought that these people didn't really love their deity, they just feared the repercussions of not falling in line. If everything sends you to hell anyways, why not have a little fun on the way there?

After the service was always the worst. Olivia insisted on mingling for a minimum of thirty minutes. Now was no exception to that rule, she had to get to know her neighbors.

That was when Emily noticed swaying blonde hair headed straight for her. Her hair had never been that shade of blonde before she started dying it bubblegum pink. It was always mousy and dull.

"Hey, Emily! I didn't know your family went to church here." Leah said. The girl locked arms with her as if they'd known each other a lifetime.

"Uh, yeah..." Emily stuttered, "I mean, I guess there's not really many churches in Bridgeton anyways."

Her heart skipped a beat as she noticed two adults inching closer toward them. Leah looked just like the woman in y'all heels, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Honestly, the woman could've been her own mother had she not taken so heavily after her father.

"Emily, dear, you left so early, we didn't even get the chance to say goodbye!" The blonde woman stopped in front of her, her husband's hand nestled on her lower back.

"You missed out on Diane's homemade cinnamon rolls, kiddo." Her husband said, then turned his attention toward Olivia and Bruce, extending his hand. "I'm Dr. Elliot Birch, Leah's dad. This is my wife, Diane."

Bruce took his hand cautiously, as if this were some sort of trap. The poise couple's smiles looked too wholesome to be _real_ , too perfect. Emily's eyes darted between the four adults and then to Leah, who was hip-against-hip to her. Leah smiled knowingly, quietly signaling that everything would be okay.

"It was such a delight having your daughter over last night. It's not everyday that you meet teenagers so polite." Diane said.

" _Polite_?" Olivia asked, wide eyed, "You're talking about this girl, right? The one with the pink hair?"

Leah pulled Emily away from their parents, allowing Diane and Elliot to swoon Olivia and Bruce in private. Emily followed her out the tall double doors and around the side of the building to the designated smoking area in the parking lot where she could light up comfortably, despite the stares from other adults that were indulging in the same sin.

"God, do you owe Judd big time." Leah smiled.

Emily took a long drag deep into her lungs. Relief filled her just as just as equally as the heavy cigarette smoke. She took that single hit and then dropped the cigarette, stomping it out beneath her heel, then pulled Leah by the shoulder into an unexpected hug.

"You have no idea the level of fucking _freedom_ your family just gave me." She said, her voice quiet and almost quivering.

Leah hugged her back.

From that moment, the two girls truly were friends, in some ways. They were artistic teenagers that simply wanted an open door in their golden cage. One of them had always been granted that, the other was only just beginning to experience it.

A golden cage may still be just a cage — but with the door open, the possibilities are endless.

Twenty minutes later the four adults joined them in the parking lot. Emily hadn't seen her mother smiling that wide in a long time. Not since before her dad died.

This was what Olivia had wanted ever since, right? A family that goes to church every Sunday, one that's happy and whole and _normal_. She wanted to have other adult friends that didn't know about her daughter's "accusations" or the fact that she'd swallowed two bottles of pills and then went into a rage when she realized she wasn't dead.

She wanted a fresh start, and here it was, served to her on a silver platter by the Birch's.

"Mom, can Emily come over to hang out for a little bit? She said she'd help me study my lines for _The Cruise-ible_." Leah said as they walked closer, reattaching herself to Emily's hip.

"Your father and I don't mind, but you need to ask Olivia and Bruce, sweetie."

Emily watched as Leah batted her big blue eyes. This girl was conniving, she was sneaky. Maybe _that_ was where she and Judd favored each other.

And then her stomach turned inside out. Emily was glad that she and Judd had skipped out on dinner last night -- anything left undigested would've been on the pavement. She watched as Bruce eyed Leah up and down. It was so subtle, she knew no one else would notice such small details.

Olivia waved her hand nonchalantly, "Go, go, have fun. Be back in time for dinner."

* * *

The drive to the Birch home wasn't as awkward as one would've expected. Elliot and Diane mostly left the two girls alone, they were in their own little world in the front seat of their hatchback.

"What'd Judd say to you guys?" Emily asked Leah, her voice cast down to a whisper.

"That you have a helicopter mom and a creepy step dad." Leah said without looking up from her phone. "Pretty much everything. You guys camped out in his car and then lied to your parents, blah, blah, blah."

"Oh my _god_ , they probably think I'm some two dollar whore that he picked up on the corner."

Leah scoffed, "Yeah right, my parents pretty much wept with joy the first time they heard my brother getting laid. As long as you're being safe, they don't give a shit who's getting fucked in their house."

The car stopped and Emily saw their home for the first time during daylight. It looked smaller now. She followed Leah up the stairs and hesitated at the door that obviously belonged to Judd. There was caution tape wrapped around it, along with the phrase "trespassers will be flayed" carved into the wood.

"I just... go in?" She asked.

Leah shrugged, "I usually knock first. Sometimes his raccoons are running rampant." She disappeared behind her much less vandalized door, leaving Emily alone in the hallway.

Her knuckles met the wood as she knocked quietly. Did he even want her here?

Nothing stirred. She knocked again and after a moment, she thought she heard a grumble from deep within the room.

Emily twisted the doorknob and opened it slowly, it was pitch black in there. Another grumble followed the click of the door closing behind her.

"Did you not see the warning on the fucking door?" Judd warned. He sounded half asleep, like his insults came so naturally he could think them up in his dreams.

"Yeah, do you plan to flay me dead or alive?"

The sudden rustling of blankets broke up the blackness, it helped Emily feel like she was actually in an enclosed space instead of an endless void. Judd flipped on the lamp on his nightstand and she was given her first eyewitness to his private life -- the band posters on his walls, stacks of notebooks on his desk, even the pile of clothes at the edge of the room.

Judd sat up in bed, shirtless and disheveled, rubbing his eyes to make sure all of this was real. He'd never seen Emily dressed up — hell, he'd grown to love her leggings and the way they curved against her ass — but this was something else. She stood leaned with her back against his door, dressed in a pale pink thigh length skirt and tucked in white shirt.

When did pink become his favorite color?

"It worked?" Judd asked, knowing that they'd be on the same page.

Emily grinned ear to ear. She'd forced herself to stuff all of her excitement down in anticipation of this moment, but now it bubbled up out of her and she had to stop herself from squealing.

"Holy shit, it fucking _worked!_ " He climbed out of bed and scooped her up, pulling her back down into the mess of sheets and blankets with him. Judd pulled the string to his lamp and allowed the two of them to be swallowed up by darkness. He wanted to be enveloped in her giggles and soft skin. "How long do we have?" He asked.

"A few hours, until six or so."

Five hours of her all to himself? That wasn't long enough. Eternity wouldn't be long enough. But it would have to do.

"What do you want to do?" Judd settled against the mattress facing her, he could feel her warm breath against his bare chest.

Emily was still so tired, and in his arms was an unbelievably comfortable place to be. "Can we just nap?" She nuzzled her nose against his sternum.

"Mhm." His hands trailed down her back and pulled her shirt loose. He dipped his thumb into the waist of her skirt. "Take this off, baby."

Judd worked down the zipper on the side and she slid the skirt over her hips. Her heels thumped against the carpet as they hit the ground.

"I hope you know that I'll be taking advantage of this every chance I get." He said, "Every weekend, you're mine."

"I'm yours every day." Emily kissed his bare chest.

They held each other like that, stroking the other's skin in a rhythmic way that lulled them both slowly to sleep. After a few hours, Diane and Elliot went to check on the pair. They hadn't heard so much as a peep out of the bedroom, let alone the sounds they usually heard when Judd brought girls home.

They cracked open the door and the hallway light shined on their son's old black comforter, illuminating two bodies wrapped up in a cocoon. At the end of the bed, four feet were visible, tangled together like they were afraid of the other taking off without them.

Emily woke up the same way that she fell asleep -- with Judd pressed against her. She was on her back and his cheek was nuzzling into her ribs, kissing his way down her shirt.

"Nuhuh," she groaned, "too sleepy..."

"I'm not trying to mess with you in your sleep, that's rapey."

He rested his head against her hip and stayed like that, cuddled against her. It still surprised Emily how big of a cuddler Judd Birch was. Most people he wanted to stay as far away from him as possible, yet here he was, literally attached to her hip. She rubbed her eyes in an attempt to wake up, the bedside lamp had been flipped on while she was still asleep.

"You do these yourself?" Judd asked, stroking his thumb over the white lines on her upper thighs. Emily couldn't feel it. Those nerve endings were long dead.

"Just don't look at them, please." She said.

"When did you do it? Before you tried to kill yourself?"

She nodded her head gently and tried to move herself away, but Judd's grip around her waist was tight.

"After your dad died?" He probed. Emily glanced down and saw no malice lingering on his face. Judd's head was cocked to the side inquisitively. He didn't hate her scars, he just wanted to know what had caused them.

"Before. Er, during... I guess." She paused to push away the mental image of her father withering away to nothing. "He was sick for a while before he died... I think watching him go was harder than him actually being gone."

Judd watched her. He searched her face for any signs of pain or hopelessness; both emotions that he had his own fair share of. He didn't find any, though. Emily's dad had been gone long enough that it didn't hurt to talk about him anymore, even though she still missed him.

Emily smiled, "He told his nurse to go fuck herself the day before he died. I remember that because my dad never cursed, but he was so weak that I wasn't supposed to be in his hospital bed with him. The nurse told me to get down and he told her to go fuck herself, that he was about to die and that he wanted to hold his daughter one last time."

When her face fell, Judd kissed the scars that lined her skin. They were so smooth, no hair grew there.

"I'm sorry. I know—"

She scoffed, cutting him off. "You don't, Judd. You don't know. And I appreciate you more than I could ever express but please don't act like you know what real fucking grief is."

He pursed his lips together and held back the overwhelming need to snap back at her. Judd might not have known the crushing sensation of grief, but he knew a hell of a lot about depression. He knew what it was like to bring a blade to your skin and slice so deep that the bleeding may never stop.

He knew what it was like to slip a noose over his head and pray for the courage to step over the edge.

"Okay, that's fair." Judd rolled off of the bed and stretched, pulling his hoodie and black jeans on. "It's almost six. I'm gonna go tell my parents that they need to drive you home real quick."

Emily pulled back on her skirt while he was gone, tucking in her shirt neatly and then fixing her hair. She glanced around the room, really taking it in this time. It looked just as messy as it had during her brief glance a few hours earlier. There was nothing that she hadn't really expected, besides maybe the stacks upon stacks of handwritten notes on his desk.

That, and the wallet sized photo taped to his alarm clock.

Emily didn't recognize the girl in that photograph, but it was her. It was the picture from her Claymoore file, the one they took after she gave them quite the fight at intake. She remembered the needle they stuck into her arm and the way it stung going in, then the liquid pumping throughout her veins that made her feel warm all over. That was the exact moment when all of the fight left her.

"All right, my mom's ready." Judd said as he re-emerged from the hallway.

"Why do you have that on your nightstand?" Emily asked, never taking her eyes away from the picture.

Judd rounded the corner of his bed and picked it up. He'd taken that picture out of the file the first night he had it. For a few days, it remained in his wallet. He'd take it out and look at it sometimes when he was up late at night and she wasn't texting back. Sometimes he clipped it to the sun visor in his car that way he could be reminded of the way she always propped her feet up on his dashboard. Lately it stayed right there, taped to the old alarm clock that he'd inherited from his father.

"So I can see your stupid face before anything else every morning." He said, smiling devilishly up from the photo.

Emily rolled her eyes. She grabbed her heels off the floor with no intention of putting them on and then approached Judd.

"I just don't want to ever see you like this again, Emmy." Judd said, "It sounds faggy as shit, but if I look at this picture every day, maybe I'll be able to intervene if you ever start feeling like this with me."

He propped the picture back up against the clock and then draped his arms around her shoulders. Her heels hit his back as she wrapped herself around him, too.

"If by 'faggy' you mean 'sweet', then you're faggy, like, all the time, Judd."

He kissed her temple, "If you call me _either_ of those words again, I'll skin you alive."

Emily felt his hand slide into hers. Between their palms was a note. It was thick, at least two pages, and folded up many times.

"Don't read that until you get home." He told her. "Leah's having a Halloween party next weekend while my parents are out of town. You're coming."

Judd released his grip on her and flung himself back into bed.

They said goodbye and he stayed there for the rest of the night, trying not to ponder about what Emily would think of him once she read that note. Like her with the photograph, Judd didn't recognize the person that wrote the letter he'd given her. It seemed like he'd scribbled it down so long ago, when really it was just over a year. Fourteen months, to be exact.

Diane didn't pry during the drive back to Emily's house, and Emily appreciated that. She asked normal parent stuff, like how school was going and whether or not she was settling into Bridgeton well. She told Emily that she and her husband hoped they'd see more of her, and Emily promised to stay for dinner one evening, then got out of the car.

Emily ate overcooked steak and baked potatoes with her parents. Carbs, lots of carbs. She knew her mother's game. Still, she smiled when appropriate and played the role of an eternally grateful daughter, anything to secure the sliver of freedom the Birch's had handed her.

When her plate was halfway empty, Olivia finally let her daughter excuse herself.

Her bedroom wasn't as cozy as Judd's. The mess on her desk ate at her brain, but it was _too_ messy for her to organize. She rifled through her underwear drawer for that little orange bottle and popped two Lexapro.

Eighty whole milligrams.

She was thankful for those eighty milligrams once she settled into bed and unfolded the note that Judd had slipped into her hand.

_I can't fucking do this anymore._

She'd read notes like this before, ones that were written in her own frantic, trembling signature. She'd written them over and over and fucking over again, preparing for the day that they'd actually be put to use.

Emily kept reading. She read those two pages twenty times that night before pulling out a sketch pad and pressing her pencil so gently against it that it barely made a mark.


	12. I'll eat you up, I love you so

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the artist I've commissioned for cover art is either ghosting me or just taking her sweet ass time finishing things up. The portrait that I've added to the end of this chapter is what I based Emily on.

Emily stared at herself in the mirror stuck to the inside of her locker. The bags under her eyes were deep and dark, her skin was looking especially pale. Sleep hadn't visited her in almost three days and she kept forgetting to eat.

That sounds like hell, right? Your mind and body being so preoccupied that the ache of hunger barely registers. Emily loved it. She created her most beautiful paintings when she went down rabbit holes just like this one.

"Dude, your eyes are bloodshot as shit." Maggie said. The ginger beauty was leaned against the lockers beside her. They'd taken to seeking each other out in the hallways the past few days.

"Yeah, I smoked before I got here to wind down. I'm hoping I can catch a nap in history if Lankford lets me."

A warm cup of coffee presented itself in front of her as Judd draped his arm around her shoulders. He never picked her up for school, she preferred to walk. Breathing in the cool air while sucking down cigarettes helped Emily prepare for another day at Bridgeton. Graduation was just out of reach, so close that she could taste the freedom it would bring.

"Decaf?" She asked

"That's what you asked for." Judd replied.

"You're a peach."

Emily turned in his grip and stood on her tippy toes to kiss the smoky breath off his lips. She was very content with being the new girl that the school psychopath had taken under his wing. She'd never planned on making friends here at Bridgeton anyways; Judd, Maggie, and possibly Leah were enough.

Judd didn't have any objections either. In some selfish sort of way, he didn't want others to know her. He didn't want them to experience the delightful pain of being ignored by her for hours on end, or the way she leaned back with her arms thrown over her head when she got high. He didn't want them to know the Emily that shed her baggy clothes and opted for leggings and a t-shirt, no makeup with her hair falling in front of her face.

He wanted her all to himself.

Her phone buzzed and she looked at it, then turned her smile down. Confusion lingered in her knitted eyebrows. Emily tossed the phone into her locker. Judd noticed the small detail but didn't speak a word.

"You going home with "Leah" today?" He asked.

"Ugh, no, therapy." Emily rolled her eyes, "My mom realized that I haven't set up my own appointment so she did it for me. I have to go straight there after class."

"I'll drop you off if you promise not to talk about me."

She slammed her locker shut and waved bye to Maggie. "Guess I'm walking then. What the hell am I supposed to talk about for forty-five minutes straight? The fact that my stepdad is a pedo?"

The two of them walked side by side to first block with Emily clutching her books to her chest. Judd rarely even brought a pencil to school. He'd convinced that kid with the fancy typewriter to switch spots with him, claiming that he had terrible eyesight and needed a better view of the white board. Really he just needed a better view of Emily's worksheets and her glazed over, sleepy face.

"Isn't that what therapy's _for_?" Judd asked.

"Not when you're seventeen." She replied, "If you're not holding a knife to your own throat or threatening to shoot up your school, adolescent therapists don't give two shits about your issues. They just wanna know what drugs you're taking and how often you're getting fucked so they can jerk off to it later."

It seemed to Judd that, for girls, going to therapy was more the equivalent of staying up late at a sleepover. He was thankful that his parents had never made him go. The thought of being locked up like Emily had didn't appeal much to him, and whatever therapist he was assigned surely would've had him committed.

Emily sat at her desk and took her first sip of coffee.

"Did you read the note?" Judd finally asked, after three days of her having it in her possession.

"Yeah."

He waited for more. "You don't want to talk about it?"

The class began getting settled and Coach Lankford took his spot at the podium up front.

"Not here I don't. I'm coming over this weekend, right?"

The teacher cleared his throat. Any conversation they had at this point would be heard by the entire class. Could they hear the way Judd's heart thumped against the inside of his chest? His hands grew clammy thinking about Saturday night.

Judd hated the annual Halloween party that Leah _insisted_ on throwing while their parents went to the cardiovascular convention. She'd started the tradition her freshman year and every season more and more of their classmates showed up, even his own friends.

This year he had something special planned.

* * *

Therapists' offices are always cold.

They don't bother warning you of that beforehand, maybe they like the sight of their clients shivering. For Emily, the cool air seeped right through her skin and into her bones. It made her joints ache and her nose run.

She sat there for the first fifteen minutes quietly, not speaking at all. One therapist she'd done this to refused her a second appointment. It was childish, she knew, but they thought of her as such anyways, so why not act like it?

"How's the Lexapro working?" Her newest counselor asked.

He was a thirty-something year old man with no signs of aging. Not a single grey hair muddied his sand colored hair, though a few laugh lines cascaded down his cheeks whenever he spoke. He was attractive, that much Emily admitted.

"It's fine." She said.

"No side effects?" Ben asked. Benjamin was his name, but he'd told her upon arrival to call him Ben. "Tinnitus? Insomnia? Nausea?"

She knew he could see the shadows under her eyes. He was just testing her honesty.

"Insomnia."

"Changes in mood, sex drive or memory?"

"Nope."

_That_ was the lie. Emily's sex drive had been through the roof. She found herself etching out provocative scenes more and more often in the sketchbooks she kept stuffed in the back of her closet. The memory of Judd's heavy gaze peeking up from between her thighs flashed in her mind at random, along with the phantom syndrome of his tongue stroking her core.

She pressed her legs together.

"Are you sexually active, Emily?" Ben asked, noticing her tense jaw.

She sunk back into the overstuffed chair. Grown men had made her uncomfortable for quite some time now, especially ones that held power over her.

"Our conversations are always recorded." He nodded to the old fashioned tape recorder on the end table. "That's for both of our benefits. I can't claim you said anything that you didn't and vice versa. I'll also remind you that you're seventeen. In the state of New York I cannot legally tell your parents anything that you say in this office."

"I'm a virgin." Emily said.

"Any boyfriends? Girlfriends?" She shook her head no to both and Ben asked, "Friends?"

He noticed that she was chewing her lip raw, licking the fresh blood up with her tongue like a thirsty vampire bat.

"I tried to kill myself, dude. Coming back from the nut house isn't like coming home from camp. That's half the reason we moved here, none of my old friends would've wanted to be friends with Bedford's certified psychopath."

"Is that what you think you are?" Ben snapped. He held a playful grin, one that told Emily he was challenging her.

"What? No!"

"Then what _are_ you?" He leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees, "I'm not getting paid to lock you up again, Emily. In fact, if you _do_ go back to the "nut house", I get paid _less_. So level with me. You're seventeen years old, you're dad is dead, you have a forty milligram prescription for name brand Lexapro, for fuck's sake."

Emily grinned. She respected him a little bit more now that she'd heard him curse.

"I don't care if you walk in here every week and tell me drama you've heard at school. But at least _talk_ to me, it's what your dad's social security is paying for."

Silence lingered between them as they held eye contact. Who would break first?

She hated him a little bit for being so good at his job. Emily pulled her feet up into the chair and hugged her knees against her chest.

"When I start having panic attacks it's like I'm underwater. Everything sounds muffled, I move slower, my lungs start to burn like they're about to fucking explode. They happen out of nowhere and I swear to god, sometimes they last for days."

"That's when you can't sleep"

Emily nodded and Ben began writing in his notepad.

"When I was little I'd start drawing and it wouldn't bring me out of the panic, but it would stop me from losing my shit. I still do that now. I have a fucking bedroom full of mania induced art that I have nothing to do with."

"That's good." Ben said. "It's okay to have healthy coping mechanisms."

But that wasn't the point that Emily was getting at.

"I've been seeing this guy—" She continued, "— and sometimes, when I'm with him, I forget what it was ever like to hear a ringing in my ear. I forget all about the feeling of shaking lungs that don't know how to breathe and hands that itch for a fucking pen and paper."

Ben looked up at her from his notepad and after a moment sat it down. He noticed the way her fingers began to drum against her knees, how her head lifted up more slowly than it might've at the beginning of her appointment.

"You're scared shitless." He said, and she nodded again. "Do you love him?"

"How can I love someone when I don't even love myself?"

* * *

Emily tried to take a walk after her session, but her legs felt like a stack of cinder blocks attached to her torso. She tried to sit outside at a small cafe near town square and draw, but none of the figures looked right with clothes on. She kept sketching the V between their hips and the peak of hardened nipples beneath their shirts. She got home and her mother didn't push her to join the family for dinner. She'd already gotten her daughter to go to therapy, that was enough of a victory for the day.

Emily retreated to her bedroom and took three little white pills and then rolled a joint. The weed would counteract the insomnia that the Lexapro caused. She sat in the window and waited for the THC to swallow her up. Getting high had always made her think of that line from the book her mom used to read her as a kid, _Where The Wild Things Are._

_I'll eat you up, I love you so._

She liked smoking. Getting high made her feel warm inside, it made her feel secure in all of her decisions; current and prior.

It made her happy, something most other things failed to do.

The joint hung between her fingers as a cool breeze blew past her, wisping her hair in front of her face. She drew in deep and held her breath until she was done reading the stanza of a short poem on her phone.

_I dreamed the other night_   
_of the scent of sweat, jaws at my throat,_   
_nails drawing blood at the base of my hair._   
_We will make love with our teeth_   
_or not at all._

And just like the poet, she dreamed too. Emily snuffed out the joint when it was halfway finished and then smoked a cigarette. She shut the window, locked her bedroom door and then turned off all the lights, shedding her clothes so that she could feel the warm sheets against her bare skin.

She felt fuzzy all over, inside and out.

When she dreamed, it was of a rainy school night and her mother pacing the foyer of their home. Water pounding against the fogged over windows of Judd's car.

In her dream, she was naked. Her skin wasn't scarred with bad decisions and shame. Judd was naked, too. He held her on his lap, her thighs spread open on either side of his hips and his driver's seat leaned back.

They moved in sync with each other, his upward thrusts meeting the downward motion of her hips. Emily could feel him inside of her, opening her up and brushing against depths that'd never been reached before. She could hear his soft grunts in her ear and smell the remnants of cigarettes on his breath. Judd's nails dug into her backside.

"I love you, Emmy." He moaned.

Emily's breath caught in her throat as he thrust into her harder.

" _Fuck_ , I love you. Tell me you're mine, baby. You daddy's sweetheart?"

The feeling of his hair brushing against her clit began to become too much. Judd held her down on his lap and rolled his hips into her. She gripped the headrest and allowed profanities to spew from her mouth.

"Don't leave me." She cried as her climax began to wash over her. "I love you, daddy.."

Emily watched like a ghost, hovering outside of her own body as they made love. Passion seeped out of their pores along with sweat. She saw Judd's hair fall away from his face as his head rolled back against the headrest, the way his knee crooked upward so he could push his cock into the hilt. She saw his sweet, soft lips part and heard animalistic moans that told her he was filling her up.

Emily rolled over onto her stomach in her sleep with her hand shoved between her legs. She woke up in an unsatisfied daze, still somewhat high and sexually frustrated beyond belief.

It was times like this that she wished she was a guy. It must be nice to cum without ever even touching yourself.

She glanced around the room, dark except for the small lamp on her nightstand. Her desk was pushed in front of the door despite her promise to Bruce to leave it where it was supposed to be.

Her phone was found stuffed under her pillow. She'd missed two calls and a text from Judd, but she couldn't handle talking to him right now. A horny mind is a lot like a drunk mind, and she didn't trust the decisions she might make right now.

So instead, she found her headphones and popped them in her ears, turning the volume down low as she pulled up PornHub incognito. She tried to find something similar to her dream — something sensual, maybe a car scene. Porn is made almost exclusively for men, so it was no surprise that she had to settle.

Emily settled back into her bed with one bare leg kicked out from underneath her comforter. She preferred to listen to the sounds of strangers moans over actually watching them. Her eyes closed and her hand slipped beneath her underwear, she was still wet from the dream. Her fingers slipped inside of her easily.

She missed the feeling of Judd's fingers — their length and width were massive compared to hers.

Fog filled her brain as her toes began to curl. She was close. Her fingers moved slowly over her clit, drawing out her orgasm. Emily was fond of edging, she never wanted the satisfaction that she gave herself to end.

And Judd — oh, he watched from just outside her window. He'd been drunk off his ass when he left Val's in search of a little love, but he sobered up quickly once he found it. There wasn't much he could see from the cover of her blanket, but the motion halfway down her body and the way her head lulled from side to side told him exactly what was going on.

He watched her push the comforter down then slide her shirt up and it became too much.

Emily's window slid open and she was filled to the brim with fear. Her eyes shot open and a calloused hand clamped over her mouth.

Fear was replaced with unfathomable embarrassment when she saw Judd's alcohol glazed eyes staring into hers.

"Having fun?" He said, his lips curling up into a hungry, wolfish grin. Judd's hand moved off of her mouth now that the urge to scream had diminished, sliding down to her jaw. He pulled her face to his and kissed her hard. Moans and the sounds of bodies hitting each other still played in Emily's ears as he devoured her.

Judd lay beside her in bed, stealing one of her headphones for himself.

"Oh my god. I-I wasn't — I mean, I was just —" she stammered.

Judd found her phone in the mess of sheets and propped himself up on her pillows. "You were masturbating." He said, holding her phone out as if they were watching a horror movie together. "Why'd you stop?"

"Are you drunk?" Emily asked. She could smell the beer lingering on his breath.

"Not anymore." He replied, eyeing her up and down. "I was at V's and started to miss you. Looks like you missed me, too."

Her cheeks blushed bright red but Emily made no effort to cover her bare legs. Her tank top had rode up above her hips and her nipples still pushed against the fabric.

"This is the most embarrassing moment of my life."

Judd snaked his arm around her shoulder. He kept watching the skin flick in front of them, this is exactly the type of porn he'd figured chicks were into. Romantic shit.

"I need to know what you're into, right? You'd be pretty put off if the first time we fuck I brought out the ropes. Now I know."

Emily'd seen those types of videos before. They always seemed so... brutal. And the ropes in question didn't look very comfortable. "You really like that kind of shit?" She asked, grimacing.

Judd scoffed. "I was a cub scout until I was ten. They taught us a lot about tying knots, bet they didn't think we'd ever use them on humans." A tent began to grow in his jeans as he reminisced on the first time he held the rough twine of a rope in his hands. "Where's your laptop?"

She produced it from the floor beside her bed and held her breath until he switched to private mode. Judd went to a site she'd never heard of before and logged in. Profile — Favorites — Emily suddenly felt like she was viewing the mysterious Book of Secrets.

Her hands became clammy viewing so many thumbnails of nude women in the presence of someone else. They were zoomed in shots of smooth skin against rough rope — some brown, some red. Mostly black.

In Judd's slightly inebriated mind, this was perfectly normal. He'd watched porn with Rowan dozens of times. They were into the same kinks. Hell, she was even more experienced than him.

He'd never been with a virgin before.

"You wanna watch? See if you're into it?" He asked, genuinity in his voice. There was a whole world of pleasure that he wanted to show her, but only in due time.

"Sure."

He scrolled down to a video he remembered as being a little bit softer — no slapping and only light choking. It was amateur style, probably shot on a smartphone. It began to play and Emily held her breath. The macabre of knots and rope was enticing. She didn't know a thing about them, but they caused a stirring between her hips.

Judd recognized the handcuff knot around the girl's wrists and the box knot trailing down her spine. They were simple, maybe even a little loose.

The male in the video touched his lover's skin lightly, holding the rope as he pulled her hips back toward his lap, effectively forcing her to take his cock to the hilt. Moans played through the headphones he and Emily shared, a male voice praising the girl.

He rolled her onto her stomach, revealing the ropes between her breasts that trailed down to her belly button and up around her neck. Emily's throat constricted as if she were in the woman's place.

"Open up, honey." The male said, then gathered up the saliva from her tongue and brought his hand down to her clit. He massaged between her legs while thrusting relentlessly.

The flick ended with a cumshot, a nice close up of a classic creampie.

Judd turned his head, praying that Emily wouldn't be looking at the laptop in horror. To his surprise, she was pleasantly flushed — her chest and neck tinted a lovely shade of pink that matched her hair.

"Say something, Em." He said after a period of silence. He wondered if he'd finally scared her off for good.

"You really know how to tie knots like that?" She finally asked, turning toward him with an inquisitive look on her face. Judd nodded, his cock straining beneath his jeans. "Do you think about tying _me_ up like that?"

He swallowed hard. "Yes. All the time." Judd said in a very matter-of-fact manner. He watched as she squirmed in her seat, pressing her thighs together to form some sort of stimulation.

"I bet you're fuckin' soaked right now, aren't you?" His tone changed in an instant, eyes darkening along with it. "What did it for you? The creampie?"

The thought of filling her up made Judd want to bust in his pants. She seemed to get smaller when she was turned on, or maybe he just felt bigger. Either way, her ocean eyes looked into his with such innocence — innocence that was an absolute lie.

"The.. uh, the knot.. on her neck." Emily said nervously, her fingers moving up to trace her collar.

He watched as she licked her lips, her eyes flickering down to his cock and then back up. "Do you want to watch another one?"

"I'd rather you just fucking kiss me already."

Judd did. He held her face in one hand and kissed her slowly, easing his tongue into her mouth with passion as opposed to vigor because he knew that she didn't want love right now — she wanted lust. Pure, unfiltered lust. Another flick began auto playing in their ears, surrounding them with the harmonious sounds of bodies becoming one.

Emily moved on top of him. She straddled his lap, pushing her core against his jeans, the friction settling against her nicely. He slid his hand to her throat and tasted her moans.

Judd was so hopelessly in love, and she knew. He could tell she knew by the way her lips curved up into a smile against his. His heart thumped away in his chest as her hips moved gently against him. The thin fabric of her cotton panties became damp quickly, rubbing against her sex as she used him to get off.

He was aching for release.

"Judd..." She moaned. His name sounded like caramelized sugar dripping off of her lips. He grabbed her by the hips and held her against him, grinding up onto her.

Emily began fumbling with his belt. It seemed like the only thing in the way and in her foggy mind, the mechanics of it just wouldn't work with her fingers. Finally, his cock sprang free, bouncing against his stomach. Judd kicked his pants down around his thighs and pulled his shirt over his head.

"Are we really doing this?" Emily panted, the thought of losing her virginity with her parents just above her was both terrifying and exhilarating.

They paused to look at each other. Judd was almost completely naked, sitting in her bedroom with her on his lap. He looked beautiful, she thought, healthy. The veins in his arms were pronounced and he almost had the outline of abs.

The only other guy she'd been intimate with looked just as sickly as her — thin, pale... sad.

"No, baby." He said, pulling her shirt gently over her stomach. He realized she had scars there too, right along her hips. "I don't want you having to be quiet when I make love to you."

He'd never described it as that before — making love. Judd Birch didn't _make love_ to girls. He fucked them. And if they got off, great, but it was purely for his enjoyment.

Not now, not with her. Judd liked watching Emily's body convulse. He liked knowing that, for just a moment, she was surrounded by nothing but greatness, and all because of him.

"But I still want you to cum for me." He said, his thumb washing over her nipple.

Emily let him slide her shirt over her head. He looked at her then, in all of her ethereal beauty, and dipped his hand between her legs. He was right earlier, his two digits slipped easily between her lips and inside of her. She let out a soft moan and Judd curled his fingers around her throat.

"Shhh..." he whispered, drawing his digits forward in a manner that was contradictory to shushing her. "Stroke my cock, Em."

She took his cock in her hand, lubricated by precum, and stroked it up and down — every vein throbbing against her nimble fingers.

" _Ffffuck._ " Judd growled. He pulled her forward by the neck, resting her forehead against his. "You like when I choke you a little bit?"

Her nod was frivolous, eager. He wasn't cutting off her oxygen by any means, but the pressure on her throat made her mind staticky. Emily felt his fingers slide out and then back in, washing over her g-spot and then her clit. He moved them methodically in a slow rhythm so that he could watch her ride out the sensation.

His heavy breaths wisped past her lips as they stroked each other in unison.

"Right th-there..." Emily choked out as Judd curled his fingers forward inside of her. "Holy _shit_..."

He smiled, because he knew that what they were doing was anything but holy. Seeing her like this, naked on top of him aside from her bunched up cotton panties, it pulled him closer to his own release. It made him ravenous.

Judd squeezed tighter around her throat. "Don't make a fucking sound." He growled.

Her cheeks turned pink from the lack of air and her small hand gripped him tighter, stroking him faster. Judd felt her thighs begin to shiver and her hips grind forward as she came around his fingers.

"So fucking _good_ , Emmy." He cooed, soft and sweet, "Such a good girl for me."

Judd's voice cracked as he spoke. With her thumb pressed firmly against the head of his cock, he felt himself twitch. He pulled her lips to his to muffle his moans as he spilled over her eager fingers, coating her hand in cum.

They recuperated slowly, neither of them wanted to pull away from the other. Judd wrapped his arms loosely around Emily's waist, resting his head on her shoulder as she stroked his undercut.

"I don't want you to leave." She whispered.

He wouldn't. He _couldn't_.

"Do I ever?" Judd asked.

Most nights that he sneaked into Emily's room, the two of them ended up falling asleep together for at least a little while. Usually until just before the morning hours, then Judd would wake up for long enough to count her steady breathing, take in the peaceful look on her face, and then dash across the wet lawns back to his car before her parents rose.

"Shower with me. Your parents are asleep, they won't wake up."

There was no convincing. Emily agreed and the two used washing each other as an excuse to explore the other's body. They kissed until the water ran cold and as she was drying off, Judd surveyed the small bathroom for any loose razor blades.

That's where he'd always kept his. Blood washed away easily down drains, leaving no evidence of self mutilation behind.

He didn't find any.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys are enjoying. Stay safe. (:


	13. We ate well and cheaply

Judd kicked open the front door of his house. His hands were tied up with a cardboard box full of enough alcohol to kill a herd of horses and Emily followed close behind with her backpack stuffed with other vices.

"What took so long? You left at two, it's almost five!" Leah stood at the top of the stairwell with two other girls sticking their heads out of her bedroom door.

"Be grateful Val's dad even bought us the shit, asshole. One day he's gonna want to cash in all the favors I owe him, then me and Em are gonna have to flee the country."

He sat the box down on the kitchen island and distributed the goods. Wine for Leah and her friends, Jack Daniels for Judd, beer for Emily and a variety of liqueurs for their guests.

"Judd's teaching me how to drive." Emily said. She hopped up onto the corner and began pulling boxes of hair dye out of her backpack. "That's what took so long, he let me drive back from the corner store on Liberty Parkway."

Emily's parents didn't want her to drive. Both of them held the same reason for that decision, though with ulterior motives — they wanted to keep her close. Olivia wanted her safe under lock and key while Bruce just didn't want her to have the option to leave.

"She'll be hitting a hundred around blind curves in no time." Judd said. He smiled at Emily and tossed her a beer.

A small boy entered the room. He looked a lot like Elliot, brown hair and blue eyes. Emily was starting to wonder where the hell Judd got his genes from, he didn't resemble either of his siblings or parents in the slightest.

He began helping himself to the bottle of red wine and a small battle ensued between him and Leah over whether or not he could have it.

"Leah, do you want me to be the little brother that tells on his sister? Is that a good look for either of us?" He asked, and Leah admitted defeat.

"Fine, you can have a little."

Judd chuckled, "He's already got a little... dick."

It was funny, Emily snorted beer halfway out of her nose but still slapped him hard against the chest.

"Well, well, well, who might this be?" The boy said. He turned his attention to Emily, who sat high above him on the counter. She could tell that this kid was going places. Even with his short stature, he had charisma and a nice smile. "I'm Nick."

Nick held out his hand and Emily leaned down to shake it, "I'm Emily."

He kissed the back of her hand and she giggled, smitten with his boyish charm.

Judd growled. He shimmied his way between his brother and her, coaxing Emily off of the counter by the waist. His jealousy knew no limits.

"We'll be upstairs dying our hair and doing hard drugs, but I'm always fucking listening." He said, then led the two of them through the living room and up the stairwell, ignoring Leah's comment about him being "America's sweetheart" all the while.

An hour later the two of them were hot boxing in the very bathroom where they'd met, their hair piled up on their head as they passed a bowl back and forth. Emily had taken care to coat the tips of Judd's locks evenly with blue hair dye, he'd never been good at touching them up himself.

"You feel good?" Judd asked her as she sat up on the kitchen sink, slowly scrolling through her phone. Emily's eyes were bloodshot and lazy from the weed. "You _look_ good."

She glanced up at him briefly, smiling. Judd had been given the pleasure of watching her change into one of his t-shirts and a pair of boxers that hung off of her hips. She couldn't risk getting any dye on her own clothes, but all of Judd's were black.

He liked seeing her in his wardrobe, the way his boxers hung off of her hips loosely. The 2-in-1 shampoo at the hospital had taken a toll on her pink hair and she'd feel good once it was the shade of bubblegum again.

Emily was breezing through Instagram as she took another hit. She still had most of her old friends on social media as well as a few new ones — really just Maggie. That was when she scrolled past a picture snapped three days ago.

Her eyebrows knitted together. Anxiety creeped through her veins like a black widow, intensifying the longer she stared.

"What's this?" She asked with obvious confusion, turning her phone toward Judd.

He glanced at it haphazardly. "A photo of Maggs and Val? They're always breaking up and getting back together, she's a dumbass."

"No, asshole —" She pushed the phone further toward him, "— in the background."

In the outskirts of Val's dingy basement looked to be Judd and Rowan. They weren't pictured cozily by any means, but they were arms length apart and not ripping each other to shreds.

"I was probably just telling her to fuck off."

She turned the phone back around and pulled it closer to her face. It sure didn't look like he was telling her to fuck off. In fact, he was making direct eye contact while sipping a beer. Emily cut her eyes up at him.

"Oh, what? You jealous?" Judd smirked, he approached her on the sink and cornered her with his hands on the granite surface at either side of her thighs. "I have a pile of blankets in the back of my car stained with cum, pussy juice, and cigarette burns, and _that's_ what finally made you jealous?"

Emily crossed her arms and leaned back against the glass mirror, putting a bit of space between them. She was an only child, being a brat was her specialty.

"I just think it's a little suspicious that I can't talk to your ex, but apparently _you_ can."

Judd's thumb found the hem of his oversized shirt that she was wearing. She looked so cute when she was pouting, lower lip puffed out and cheeks a little red. He slid his hand over her ribs, exposing her torso by bringing the shirt with him.

"You're pretty cute when you're pissed, you know." He said, dipping his head down. Judd's lips met her ribs and he stained her skin with soft kisses.

He grabbed his phone from the other end of the counted and unlocked it, holding it out for her.

"What's this?" She asked. The shirt slid up further, Judd kissed his way up her sternum. She could feel his hot breath spreading across the surface of her skin like a wool blanket.

"My phone, you tit. You think I'm hiding shit from you so bad, have a look."

He shoved the phone into her hand. Judd's thumb washed over her nipple, stroking it until it stood erect. Emily didn't know what game he was trying to play, but any suspicions were swept out of her mind when she felt her t-shirt pool above her breasts, his lips moving over her chest until he caught her free nipple in his mouth.

"I-I, I don't want to—" She started, her voice escaping in short gasps.

"I know what you want." He began, "You want to know that I'm yours, right? That you're mine, and I'm yours, and there's no one in between."

Emily looked down her body and watched him take her nipple between his teeth, sucking it gently and then biting even gentler.

"Well I am. I'm yours, no one else's."

Judd stood upright between her open legs and dropped the shirt back over her chest, it pooled around her waist just as it had before. He was waiting, it seemed. Waiting for her to do her search and then apologize for being so insecure.

Instead she simply locked the phone and sat it back down against the sink.

"I don't want to look." She said. "You haven't given me a reason not to trust you and I don't want to make you feel like I don't."

Judd breathed a small, inconspicuous sigh of relief.

He turned on the shower and they got ready for the evening. Emily blow dried her hair but opted for no makeup. Her therapist had given her suggestions on how to become acquainted with herself.

"It's the first step to loving yourself." He'd said.

That first step included seeing herself as she actually was, not who she wanted to be. Who _was_ was a girl with dull skin and sparse freckles, scars on her legs and hips.

Except that wasn't what Judd saw as he watched her hold the blow dryer away from her face.

He saw an ocean of blue eyes that he wanted to drown in, and fingers that had a surgeon's precision. He saw a girl that was terrified of repercussions but still smoked weed and cigarettes and snuck boys into her room at night — someone that wanted to taste chaos but not face the consequences.

Unfortunately, you can't take without giving a little in return.

Emily dressed in well fitting mom jeans and tucked in her white tank top, Judd his signature black jeans and black hoodie. He wrapped his arm around the front of her chest and held her against him as they looked at themselves in the mirror that spanned his closet doors.

Judd snapped a photo of them and they made their way down the stairs at just past nine o'clock.

The house was loading up with teenagers quickly, mostly ones that Emily had never seen before. They were a grade below her and a great deal of them were drama nerds, which meant they were extraordinarily loud on top of the already bumping music.

Judd disappeared for a moment and then re-emerged with two shot glasses full of dark whiskey.

"Drink." He said. She didn't object.

The liquid burned going down and she washed the sting away with a swig of beer.

There's an upside to forgetting to eat — your alcohol tolerance stays exceptionally low. After three more shots and two cans of PBR, Emily was who she wanted to be all of the time. Happy, lively, sociable.

But mischievous is also what she often turned into. The liqueur warmed her veins and reddened her cheeks, it put a pep in her step that had her wandering away from Judd and his friends.

She was ready to make friends of her own.

Emily wandered around the backyard, there were people playing games of beer pong and flip cup and something with a plastic bat that you had to spin around and not throw up. Groups of people were huddled around the pool and she didn't particularly know what she was looking for.

One girl caught her by the forearm as she passed by. "You're the new girl, right? Emily?"

"That's me." She said and pulled her pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket.

The girl sized her up.

"You know Judd is _definitely_ gonna shoot up the school some day." She offered Emily a light. "You're hot. Why are you hanging out with a psychopath when you could be spending time with Marcus?"

There were two boys standing beside the girl, one of whom apparently proved to be the Marcus in question as he hissed, " _Anna!_ Don't put her on the spot, I was gonna ask her out when we got a minute _alone!_ "

Emily sipped her beer and smoked her cigarette, choking on the smoke as the admission unfolded. She realized that trying to find her way out of an awkward situation while drunk was similar to being caught in a house of mirrors. She didn't know which way to turn or how to excuse herself.

"Have it your way." Anna shrugged and then grabbed the other boy by the hand, tugging him back toward the house.

Just as Marcus had wanted, the two were alone. He shoved his hands nervously into his jacket pockets.

"Sorry about that, she's kind of... a lot." Marcus laughed.

_He has nice skin,_ Emily thought to herself. She knew that there were no dark, ugly scars spanning the width of his thighs. He'd never punched a hole through the drywall of his bedroom because he'd rather focus on _that_ pain than the nagging thoughts in his head. And she wasn't mad at Marcus for winning the mental health lottery — she was happy for him — but that was also the answer to Anna's rather blunt question.

"Look, I appreciate the affirmation — seriously, I fucking thrive off of it — but Judd and I are kinda..." She hesitated to explain what the two of them were. Nothing had been set in stone, Emily just knew that she was his and he was hers.

"I get it." Marcus pursed his lips in an embarrassed smile, "Judd's a good dude, he hooks me up sometimes when my plug is dry. Plus he did really good by Rowan, god fucking knows that bitch didn't deserve it. I just wasn't sure how serious you guys were, so I had to shoot my shot, y'know?"

Judd watched the two conversing from across the yard. They stood too closely for his liking. Emily was smiling too much and she looked too comfortable for his blood to not run hot at the mere sight. He made his way across the yard and slid his hand across the small of her back.

She glanced up at him, her eyes glazed over with intoxication and endearment, and Judd's temper began to settle.

"You slipped away from me." He said.

Emily turned her body into his and folded her arms behind his neck. "You were hanging out with your friends and I got antsy. You know Marcus?"

He nodded over her shoulder at the boy who was much bigger than himself. The two exchanged casual "heys" and then Judd fished in his pocket for a small plastic bag.

"Free drugs." He said, and Marcus grinned.

"Not tonight, man. I've got practice in the morning and still have to drive Anna and Zach home. You guys have fun though, take care of her." With that, Marcus excused himself.

Judd grabbed Emily by the jaw and pulled her face up to his. He kept her body close and his voice cast down. "You better not be flirting with other guys in my own house, Em."

She grinned mischievously, dropping her beer can into the grass.

"What if I was? Does that make you jealous?"

His grip around her waist tightened. The thought of her being this close to anyone else absolutely _did_ make Judd jealous. He smirked and ran his thumb across her bottom lip. "A little."

He kissed her and tasted her beer soaked tongue in her mouth. The night was still young, fresh rounds of pong had begun in the yard and crowds of teenagers were still filing in one by one.

"Wanna go on a trip?" Judd asked. He opened the bag and tore off a few tabs of offwhite paper.

"Acid?" Emily watched as he popped three little squares onto his tongue. They dissolved slowly. "I've never done it before."

He tore off just one for her and held it on the tip of his finger. "I know. I set something up so that it'll be nice for you."

Emily may not have been the drug addict that her state appointed psychologist claimed she was, but she'd enjoyed her fair share of escapism. She stuck out her tongue and Judd placed the tiny piece of paper in it. Before she had the chance to change her mind, it was gone.

"Now what?" She asked.

Judd took her hand and led her to the pool house. It was seldom used after the end of summer, in the winter months it more or less became a den for the family.

"Let's smoke. It'll help ease you into the trip." He said.

They settled into the dusty old couch that'd seen years of abuse. Judd prepared a bong for the two of them and she was the first to inhale. Not too much, as she didn't want to overwhelm herself. Twenty minutes went by and she was feeling comfortable. The alcohol was beginning to wear off, replaced by the strategic hands of THC that gave her the dopamine and serotonin that her brain failed to do on its own.

"Is this where you did it?" Emily asked, her head resting on the overstuffed cushions. She watched as Judd filled his chest up and held it for a moment, then exhaled.

" _Tried_ to do it." He corrected, then coughed once. "Yeah. I knew that it would take my family a little while to find me out here."

Emily pulled the folded up note out of her pocket and lay it between their laps. For the first time, someone was asking Judd, "Why?"

_Why did you do it?_

It's a question that's hard to explain and even harder to understand unless you're able to crawl inside that person's mind, because simply stating _"I didn't want to live anymore"_ isn't satisfying enough.

"When I was only first considering it, I thought it was because of Rowan." He said. "She beat me the fuck down. Every fight we had was my fault, every time I caught her with other guys, I'd apparently driven her to it. I wasn't enough for her... but then that turned into me not being enough for myself, too."

Emily gave him a moment to breathe. She knew firsthand how difficult it was to have this conversation.

"It wasn't that type of thing where I didn't feel loved or I thought everyone hated me or whatever. It was kind of like... all I could see was the bad in myself. I stopped wanting to kill Rowan and just wanted to kill myself."

"It can be over in a fucking minute —" Emily said, "— That's what you were thinking, right? All you have to do is step off that ledge and all the pain goes away forever. It sounds so nice when you're already being strangled to death by depression."

Judd scoffed, "Yeah, it does... maybe that's why you _did_ step off that ledge and I didn't. All I could think about was my dad, how it would fucking kill him if I died. And how bad it fuck Nick up, he's too young to know that kind of pain."

She slid her palm across the couch and to his lap, taking his hand in her and intertwining their fingers.

"Well I'm glad you didn't. And I'm glad you whipped your dick out and pissed in front of me the first time we met, it was a real ice breaker."

The young couple laughed. Judd brought her hand to his lips and kissed her long, cold fingers. "And I'm glad you suck at killing yourself."

Emily's mouth dropped in false offense, "I think I did pretty damn good, if I do say so myself! The paramedics were just better. I was gone for a minute, they said, but they got me back." Her smile fell slowly and she scoffed, "I remember waking up a few hours later and just sobbing... my mom thought it was because I regretted what I did, but I was just pissed at myself for not locking the fucking door."

"I did the same." Judd chimed, "I remember dangling one leg off the edge of the barstool and feeling the rope dig into my throat... and I couldn't fucking do it. I wanted it so bad, but I just... I didn't have the guts. I got down and just fucking lost it because I was so angry at myself."

He looked up at the rafters above the bar area and Emily's eyes followed. She could see his body dangling there — cold, lifeless, an empty vessel.

"What was it like? Being dead."

Emily shuttered. She still thought of death so fondly. "Warm, like being wrapped in a blanket on a rainy day. People think of it as cold and lonely... but it wasn't for me. It was everything I expected it to be and more."

She felt the air around her lighten. Her hair wisped out of her face as if a window were open and when she looked around the room, the walls breathed in and out slowly. The atmosphere had a pink hue to it.

"Th-the walls..." Emily whispered, pulling her hand away from Judd to motion toward them.

His face lit up. He'd been seeing it too for a few minutes now, just didn't want to scare her into the trip too quickly.

"I think you're gonna like this, Emmy." His words floated out of his mouth and swirled around her in fluorescent blues and neon greens, like Van Gogh's _Starry Night_.

Judd pulled a box out of the entertainment center and sat it on the floor. He unloaded a wooden palette and a dozen tubes of paint, as well as brushes of all sizes. Emily picked up one of the tubes to investigate its ingredients, but the letters seemed to float right off of the packaging.

"Is this all real?" She asked. The pink hue in the air faded to purple, and then blue, and so on.

He stood in front of her off the edge of the couch, looking much taller to Emily that he actually was. Judd pulled his hoodie over his head and tossed it onto the recliner nearby. Her body buzzed.

If he'd asked her to make love to him right then, she would've.

"Do you want to paint?" Judd asked, and it was as if a new world opened up.

Emily's mind was swarmed with all the things she wanted to create — scenes that she'd never imagined before. Except there was no twitching in her fingers, no nagging, clawing sensation in her brain. She wanted to make art simply because it was what she was born to do, not what she _had_ to do.

Judd lay on his stomach on the carpet and she straddled his legs. She touched his back gently, he felt like velvet. Sparse freckles dotted his shoulder blades, reminding her of constellations. Orion, Gemini, Draco.

The colors ran together on the palette. Or atleast, for her they did. She didn't know what shades she was mixing but it _felt right_. Small, deliberate brush strokes paced the center of Judd's back and the bristles resembled the softness of a feather.

"I'm gonna take you away. You know that, right? We don't have to wait until graduation. I'll be eighteen in a few weeks and after your birthday in March, we can dip out of here."

Emily smiled. "And where do you plan on taking us?"

She didn't know what in particular her fingers were coaxing her into painting, but it was coming along nicely.

"The city. I know some people there, they can put us up in a basement apartment. You can decorate it with your art and look for a tattoo apprenticeship, I'll get some shit part timer while I work on —" Judd hesitated.

"You can tell me." She said, her voice a soft pillow resting against his ears.

"While I work on my writing... maybe I can get a column in the newspaper or I'll catch a break and get published."

Emily paused. It all sounded like a dream to her... living in a small apartment with someone that treated her like gold. _Gold_. The outline of Judd's body shimmered as such, like the silver lining on her shit life.

"You'd do all that for me?" She asked in disbelief.

She knew then that this was what love felt like. Maybe it was her skewed perception of reality that brought her to that understanding, but it was a feeling that she hadn't known in quite some time. And like death, it engulfed her — wrapped her up in a warm blanket and sat her next to a fire.

" _With_ you, Em." Judd said. "I read a poem the other day —

_We ate well and cheaply_

_and drank well and cheaply_

_and slept well and warm together_

_and loved each other._

— Is it okay that I want that with you? We're both still here, we lived long enough to meet each other and I've been fucked in the head ever since."

Judd lifted up on his palms and rolled over with Emily still on top of him. He sat up on his elbows, careful to not smudge her masterpiece.

"If I have to do life, I'd rather do it with you."

He watched her blown out pupils search for any sign that he was lying. They scanned his face for any twitch, any _tell_ , they roamed over his throat for any nervous swallow.

"Okay." She said, "I can start doing commissions, saving up some cash."

Judd sat up, he pulled her onto his lap and then grabbed her by the face. What the fuck was air? His heart beat so violently in his chest that he thought it would explode.

"I'll do under the table jobs with Val's dad." He kissed her hard, pulling away only briefly as he began to lay her on her back. "Five fucking months. Promise me that you'll hang on for that long."

Emily nodded violently and pulled his face back to hers. She was beneath him now, and they spent hours kissing and touching and whispering dreams of better days to each other as two koi fish of complimentary colors swam on the skin of Judd's back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends if anyone gives a shit what I do in my free time, check out my Etsy shop's Instagram page - @LocustLabs
> 
> I'm really thinking of doing a Draco Malfoy x OC/Reader. What do you guys think?


	14. I'm dead anyways

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW - SEXUAL ASSAULT

“Wake up.” Diane said from the doorway of her family’s poolhouse, stern and serious, someone that most people wouldn’t typically describe her as.

Early afternoon light flooded into the building, blinding Emily and Judd as they were ripped out of a deep, comfortable sleep. Judd pulled his hood over his head, shielding himself from the light while Emily turned her face into his body. She’d been dreaming so vividly, it took her a moment to realize that  _ this  _ was the real world.

“You two — living room —  _ NOW _ .” She slammed the door behind her and it shook the beach themed artwork hanging on the walls.

It took a few minutes, but eventually Judd stirred. He stretched his long limbs out on the scratchy loveseat. He and Emily had contorted their bodies in impossible ways a few hours earlier so that they could both fit on it, their limbs tangled together and lost in an old quilt.

“We’re fucked, Em.” His voice was hoarse.

Emily sat up. She did her best to straighten out her clothes and hair, but it didn’t change the fact that the floor still swayed subtly. It made waves like a soft breeze blowing against the ocean on a calm morning. She was still hallucinating, but only a little. 

They made their way slowly into the main house where the rest of the Birch’s were waiting for them. Diane and Elliot had come home right on time from the convention, their kids were just too drunk and high to wake up early enough to cover their tracks. Judd slouched down at the far end of the couch and Emily propped herself up on the arm.

“I can’t  _ believe  _ you kids would throw a party while your father and I were out of town!” Diane scolded. Her arms were crossed squarely over her chest, her brow stern.

Elliot, on the other hand, seemed not so surprised. Or maybe he was just that understanding TO to the fact that teenagers will be teenagers and there isn’t much that can be done about the matter.

“Emily, I have half a mind to tell your parents what went on here last night.”

Emily’s heart dropped. Her eyes darted up from her feet. “Please don’t do that.” She pleaded, “I mean, you have every right to -- I understand why you would -- but please don’t. My mom would  _ literally  _ kill me.”

An alarm started ringing from between the cushions. Nick fished it out, glancing at the screen before handing it over to Emily. “It says ‘Therapy — DONT BE LATE’.”

Another drop of her heart. The alarm had been going off in intervals beginning an hour ago. Emily’s head rolled back on her shoulders from the brief realization that her life was over. 

“Fuck it. I’m dead anyways.”

Diane and Elliot looked at each other. All of the anger seemed to have melted off of the older woman’s face. Her baby blues softened again as she conversed in an unspoken language with her husband.

“Judd, go ahead and drive Emily to her appointment.” Elliot said. “After that, you’re grounded for two weeks.”

Judd searched for his keys in the couch and opened the door for her, the two drove in silence all the way to her therapist’s office.

* * *

“How are you feeling today, Emily?”

The words barely registered in her mind. She was too busy focusing on the way Ben’s hands looked slightly too large. She’d decided that she both loved and hated acid. She liked how inspired it’d made her the night before, how vivid it made her dreams -- but hated how long it lasted. 

“Just tired.” She looked up from his hands quickly. “Sorry for being late. I overslept.”

Ben smiled. He clicked on his penlight and shined it across the gap that separated them, right into her eyes.

“You’re high.” He scribbled in his notebook and the sound made Emily wince.

“I’m always high.”

“You smell like beer.” Ben added, then cocked his head. “I’m not going to rat on you for partying, just making an observation. Aside from tired, how are you actually feeling?”

Emily remembered the promises she’d been made and the dreams that had followed.

Dreams of a small basement apartment with low fluorescent lighting, plants in the corner and easels resting against the wall. There was a desk strewn about with loose papers and a small couch in front of an even smaller tv. 

It wasn’t much, but it made Emily excited. It made her smile.

“I feel hopeful.” She said.

“How are things going with…”

“Judd.” She said. “Good. Really good, I think.”

Ben pursed his lips. “Let’s address the elephant in the room… your parents.” He watched Emily’s breathing shutter. It stopped all together before resuming far too slowly to be natural. “Ever gonna tell them?”

“So they can lock me up for the next few months?” She scoffed. “Fuck that. They can find out in March when I’m packing my shit.”

“Emily, you have to understand… they thought they were doing what was best for you.”

The small amount of trust that Ben had earned from Emily was like a small string thrown over the edge of a pit that she sat at the bottom of. It began to fray then — as she stood up.  _ She  _ would describe that act alone as claustrophobia. The feeling of those white walls closing in on her as they always had. Ben, on the other hand, knew it as anxiety. 

Emily ran her fingers through her unwashed hair. “What was  _ best  _ for me wasn’t group therapy and a shared room with a fucking psychopath. It wasn’t being threatened with the tube if I didn’t eat the slop they fed us on cafeteria trays.”

She tried the door and it was locked. Her open palm met it next, and it shook, but not hard enough to rattle the stock photos hanging framed next to it. 

“What would’ve been best is if someone — fucking  _ anyone _ — had actually listened to me.”

Silence surrounded her but she could still hear her heartbeat thumping in her eardrums. This was the type of “acting out” that the orderlies at the hospital didn’t appreciate -- the kind that her parents resented. Emily had been coached for weeks on breathing techniques and how to close her eyes and count backward from ten. 

She did that then, pressed her forehead against the cold door and counted backwards to herself.

“Judd listens to you.” Ben said quietly. “And I’m listening to you. That’s more people than you had a few months ago.”

Emily began to lose count as she focused more on not letting him see her cry. She was so fucking  _ sick  _ of crying. When the tears started streaming down her face, people always assumed it was because she was sad.

It was because she was simply  _ angry. _

“Why did you try to kill yourself, Emily?”

Ben stood up and crossed the room as she crouched down with her back against the wall. He had the tissues ready as he stood over her, seemingly the shell of the girl she was only moments prior.

He reached out and as she looked up at him, he was brought to a pause. The tears in her eyes were laced with poison — watery blue irises hiding a raging flame behind them.

“Touch me and I’ll strangle you.” Emily spat. 

Ben sat the tissues at her feet and in a few seconds she found out how to shimmy the door open. 

But she didn’t find solace outside of the office either. Her bag was clutched tight to her chest, face red from spite, and a horn honked as she began to race down the sidewalk. 

Her blood ran cold. She took a deep breath and composed herself before turning toward the Honda. She’d never dreamed that such an inconspicuous thing could be her own epitome of hell — a fucking Honda Accord. 

She got in the seat and quickly buckled herself up.

“You okay, kid? You took off pretty fast out of there. Not very polite — your therapist was nice enough to take an appointment on a Sunday for you.” Bruce said. 

He’d been waiting, she could tell. Emily shoved her fingers against her tear ducts to stop the fear from leaking out.

“I’m good, you know how I get sometimes.  _ Emotional _ . We were done for the day anyways.”

That should’ve been the end of it. 

Bruce should’ve put on his seatbelt, threw the car in reverse, and started back toward their house. Instead Emily felt the weight of his eyes baring down on her. She felt her lungs collapsing and tasted the metallic sensation of blood in her mouth as she bit the inside of her cheek.

And then his hand slid slowly over her thigh. She was frozen.

“You’d tell me if he tried anything, right?” Bruce said. 

“He didn’t.” She snapped back, hoping that her response would satisfy him.

“Someone has. I know you’ve had someone in your room, Em.” He said. “I can’t prove it. Your mom thinks I’m paranoid, you’ve really got her fooled, but I know it.”

Paranoid wouldn’t quite describe him. No, Emily had an arsenal of choice words she’d use for people like him. But ‘stupid’ is one that she’d use only to describe herself. She felt  _ stupid _ for believing that these last few months of torment would fly by. They were going to be the longest five months of her life.

Tears began to roll slowly down her face. “Please don’t do this again.” She whispered, and her voice cracked.

The sounds of a belt unbuckling followed by the unraveling of a zipper came next.

“Just keep looking out the window.”

* * *

Judd sat in his Jeep surrounded by haze. His parents would kill him for not coming straight home. Hell, he would’ve  _ rather  _ been home than here, but there was business to take care of.

The passenger door opened and then closed. 

“You look like death.” Rowan said from the seat next to him. She reached for the lighter in the center console, savvy to the ends and outs of every inch of his life.

“I’m still trippin’ a little.”

She offered him a cigarette and he declined. Her Marlboros didn’t appeal to him much anymore, not when he’s spent so much time tasting Emily’s Pall Malls. 

“Let’s cut to the chase then. What have you been hounding me to meet up for? ‘Cause I can tell it’s not reconciliation.”

Judd glared at her before reigning his emotions back in. He’d have to keep the visual daggers at bay if he wanted what Rowan had access to.

“Your dad —” He started, “— is he still on at The Metro in the city?”

“Duh, he’s been there since before I was born.”

She rolled down the window for her smoke to waft out of but it remained lingering between the two of them. The air was eerily still. Judd’s skin prickled up in goosebumps -- not the kind that you get after your first kiss, but more remnant of the hair along a dog’s spine when they’re ready to attack.

“You want a few of your girl’s pieces displayed at his next exhibition, don’t you?” Rowan asked. 

Judd’s eyes darted her way. “I can pay him for the wall space. I know he fuckin’ hates my guts, but…”

She began laughing, and with that followed coughing as she choked on the smoke that would some day kill her. 

“What’s so funny?!” He spat.

“That you’re so fucking  _ desperate _ , dude!” Rowan tossed her cigarette out the window. “God, her work is fucking  _ good! _ Do you even realize that? I’ve watched her spend an entire hour and a half with only her fingers moving around a sketchpad. I’ve watched her stare at a blank canvas and it’s like she’s calculating where her paintbrush needs to go before she even lays it down.”

Like Judd, Rowan had spent far too long simply observing Emily. She often watched her from across the art room, completely unable to predict where her hand would move next. It was mesmerizing to see someone with so much drive that it seeped out of them in the form of a manic frenzy.

“Do you have any of her paintings with you?” Rowan asked, and Judd turned toward his back seat.

“One painting and a charcoal drawing.”

He turned back around, rolled up parchment paper in hand, and stopped. 

For the first time in quite a while, he saw Rowan as a person. He saw an ache lingering behind her eyes, which were just as green as his. 

They were too alike — that was why they hadn’t worked. They were both fucked up individuals that expressed it in the same away, with anger. Judd was the fire and Rowan had been the gasoline that caused him to flare up and then burn out. 

“You love her, huh?” She asked. 

Judd breathed in deep and, for the first time, admitted it. “Yeah… it’s scary.”

Rowan nodded slowly with her lips pursed into a smile, as if the truth disappointed her. “You should tell her then.” She huffed out a small bit of laughter. “And not mid-sex, like you did me.”

The pair relaxed a little. It hadn’t always been turbulent times during their relationship. In fact, Judd figured that he really might have loved Rowan at one point or another. But when you’re on the cusp of adulthood and can’t find a way to express that you feel so tortured in your own head, you lash out at those that you feel most deeply for. 

Rowan had lashed out at him and Judd had absorbed all that violence and thrown it right back at her, then at everyone around him.

“I think she knows anyway. We’ve made too many plans for her not to. Here, let me give you these.” Judd got out of the car and Rowan followed. He pulled the canvas out of his backseat, the one painted mostly in red of a man with a pointed tail and a woman who didn’t give a shit that he would be her demise.

“I’ll let you know in a few days what dad says. He’ll probably want at least three more, and forty percent profit of whichever ones sell.” Rowan glanced up as she gathered the canvas under her arm. “They’ll  _ all _ sell.”

“Thanks, Ro.” Judd replied.

He drove back home with the radio off, chewing his nails nervously as he prayed to God that he hadn’t just trusted the devil.

Judd got home and accepted his punishment — a two week grounding plus an extra week for not coming straight home. Until Thanksgiving, there would be no sitting in his car for hours on end, chain smoking with Emily’s legs thrown up on the dashboard. No leaving in the middle of the night to down a few beers with his friends. Diane had been lenient enough to still allow Emily over, but that was simply because she wouldn’t be the one to cut off somebody’s safe space. 

He texted her but never got a response.

Emily got home and retreated to her bedroom — she barely had enough time to shove her desk in front of her door before vomiting into the little wastebasket in the corner. 

She cried until her eyes felt bruised, until there were no tears left inside her. Once she was done crying, the migraine set in. It was a cycle she knew too well; vomit, cry, migraine.

By the time the migraine set in it was late. Her parents weren’t yet in bed, but she could sneak into the bathroom next to her bedroom easily enough.

She sat in the shower for what felt like an eternity, allowing the water to burn so hot that she was sure this was what the lakes of Hell felt like. It would take such heat to singe the filth off of her. 

When her skin was finally nice and numb, her head no longer pounding, Emily did something that she hadn’t done in far too long.

She jimmied the blade out of her shaving razor and stared at her reflection in it. Then she brought it across her thighs, watching as the floor of the tub became pink with diluted blood. 

Emily bit her tongue to stop from screaming. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends, sorry I've been so absent lately. I started an Etsy shop and it really took off, so I'm pretty much working two full time jobs right now.
> 
> Follow Hhhlooyy on IG for more of her awesome work, and enjoy this commission I had done by her!


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